By Ari Rutenberg
In the following post, HuffPost blogger M.S. Bellows Jr. gives the most accurate and eloquent description
of why Obama's position on FISA is so pointless and aggravating from a social and psychological perspective I've yet read (for the legal and policy implications, read Glenn Greenwald). He writes:
It's true that Barack Obama has taken flak from many of his supporters for his shift to the "center" since locking up the Democratic nomination. Some of the angst on the left is naive and loses sight of the fact that every candidate must reach out to a different constituency in a general election than he or she did in the primary; that's the nature of politics. What's more, all of us (not just politicians) struggle to balance our own sense of right and wrong against the perceptions and judgments of others: what will our spouse, our children, our parents, our boss, the neighbors think?....
I don't hold most of Obama's shifts in position against him; or, at the very least, I respect him enough to give him the benefit of the doubt. If he is great, then much of what is blithely called "flip flopping" may actually be the wise refusal of a true statesman to adhere to a foolish consistency. So he says one thing in a public place, and later adjusts it; I'm willing to at least postpone judgment until I can ask why. Opting out of campaign finance, wearing or not wearing a flag pin: these are "shadows on the wall"; who cares?...
But that doesn't mean it's all good.
There are two laws by which inconsistencies must be judged. One is expediency: when a politician tactically shifts his position to obtain some larger good, does it pay off? Is he getting the good thing he's bargaining for? If so -- if a politician budges on a funding bill in order to improve some aspect of education, for instance -- then it may just be wise horse-trading. But if it's a net loser, then we can call that politician unwise.
The other limit to acceptable inconsistency is this: every great statesman, every great person, must adhere to some larger, immovable principles. He must stand for something. It's only when staying true to our core principles that we can indulge in the freedom to make necessary adjustments on transient issues. In fact, that's the heart of Emerson's lesson: that if we are true to our principles, then in the end our minor inconsistencies -- our "flip flops" -- will seem as insignificant as the Andes or the Himalaya are, seen from space...
On the FISA legislation, Obama is coming very close to failing both the expediency and principle tests.
His abandonment of principle couldn't be clearer, no matter what his defenders say. The FISA "compromise" allows the government to data-mine the contents of millions of Americans' communications -- their phone calls, emails, IMs -- even when there's no suspicion at all that those Americans are involved with terrorism, and without warrants. The bill pretends to add warrant and other oversight requirements -- but, as Glenn Greenwald has repeatedly explained in his columns on this issue, and as Senator Russ Feingold explained on the Senate floor yesterday (caution: superb, but really long, speech), it also contains exceptions that swallow the rule. Obama, a Constitutional Law professor, knows better. There's no way a "yes" vote on this bill can be reconciled with what he said less than a year ago, on August 1, 2007, when he referred to the "false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand" and promised "no more illegal wire-tapping of American citizens.... That is not who we are. And it is not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists. The FISA court works. The separation of powers works. Our Constitution works."
You can read the full article, with audio, here.
