No minimally honest or rational person can reconcile the President’s Friday signing statement with the vow he gave during that campaign event, nor can any such person reconcile his claimed war powers regarding Libya with the view he emphatically expressed during the campaign. And, of course, the list of similar departures from his own claimed views during the campaign is depressingly long: from railing against the evils of habeas corpus denial to fighting to deny habeas review to Bagram detainees; from vowing to protect whistleblowers to waging the most aggressive war in American history against them; from condemning the evils of writing bills via secret meetings with industry lobbyists to writing his health care bill using exactly that process; from insisting that Presidents have no power to detain or even eavesdrop on Americans without due process to asserting the power to assassinate Americans without due process, etc. etc. etc.
It would be one thing if these full-scale reversals were on ancillary issues. But these are fundamental. They’re about the powers of that office and the nature of our government. And Obama made these issues the centerpiece of his campaign.
One thought on “Paragraph of the day”
Comments are closed.
I’ll quote David Simon from that excellent interview with Bill Moyers for you: