It isn't that difficult to keep the following two thoughts in one's head at the same time -- though it seems to be for many people:
(1) What Barack Obama is doing on Issue X is wrong, indefensible and worthy of extreme criticism;
(2) I support Barack Obama for President because he's a better choice than John McCain.
Olbermann counterpunches:
I think John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds (maybe 26 Keith Olbermanns).
I am sure Greenwald will respond later today. My take is in the post below. I'm happy Olbermann is up to at least engaging in discussion, even if he is currently flaming, and even though he's being an idiot. If you want to read esoteric legal discussions of issues like this one, go to Balkinization.
Update: And here is Greenwald's response. It's a knockout. It is never a good idea to get into the ring with Greenwald, as he always makes you look foolish. I never expected to see someone like Olbermann going at it with him. The question now is whether or not Olbermann will retract his statements, apologize, and go on record, on Countdown, calling Obama's failure here what it is. I think he will. If he does, it will be an interesting footnote in the history of the relationship between internet and tv.
Update II: And the crowd applauds. Balloon Juice, Talk Left, Firedoglake (with a Dean response) and Buck Naked Politics. An amusing comment:
This is one argument Olbermann ain’t gonna win. It’s sort of like fighting a starving Rottweiler for a rib bone—with your bare hands. You might get the bone….but it’s extremely doubtful, and you’re definitely going to end up with something bleeding.
8 comments:
This whole Glenn v. Keith & Obama thing has been rather amusing to this spear carrier of the VRWC.
Just some random thoughts:
1. Obama's reversals have been, in point of fact, jaw-dropping, but not the less gratifying to those on the Right. On an immediate Iraq pull-out, on FISA, on public funding, on "preconditions," on his church, on the DC gun ban, he has deliberately, painstakingly staked out the opposite of what he so recently presented as part of his moral crusade--and I couldn't be happier. Does he tell the truth this time? Maybe. Maybe he won't be such a bad President after all.
2. You're going to vote for him and he's probably going to win, but let's please not kid ourselves that, as President, he'll ask for any withdrawal in Iraq anytime soon, or anything less than the broadest, most invasive parameters on FISA or anything else having to do with survelliance. On the first, he will convene a meeting with Petraus and the JCS, then say, from the Oval Office, "I was not aware the extent of the success/failure of the present operation; we must stay the course, etc., etc." On the second, it is against the DNA of a President to accept less than full discretion on intelligence; LBJ didn't, nor FDR, nor anybody else.
3. Draw a lesson. Clinton savaged Bush 41 about his China and Haiti policies all through the summer of 1992; once President, Clinton continued the same China policy and went to Federal Court to protect his continuation of Bush's Haiti policies.
4. You're gonna get your guy, but I hope you're listening closely. Democracy consists of giving the people what they ask for--good and hard.
Hey Joe.
1) Iraq pullout. He always qualified his statements, and I was never completely happy with them. My memory fails, but it seems like only Richardson and Paul were saying things like everyone out in one second flat. Obama and Clinton have both hedged, from the beginning, about keeping the 50,000 some odd troops there in the permanent bases. They never came out with it, but it was always implied.
Public funding: I would have been upset if he had agreed to public funding. At least he hasn't broken the law, like McCain did in the primary. Obama's mistake was in his original statement, not in his reversal. The problem with financing is where the money usually comes from: corporate interests. Obama's primarily has come from small individual donations, so the underlying problem is resolved. He flipped, and I'm glad. The church thing and gun thing are meaningless to me. I am uninterested in the details.
FISA: this hurts. It is as bad as Clinton's AUMF vote. He doesn't believe anything he is currently saying by it, and is eroding the fourth amendment for political expediency. It pisses me off.
2) I am going to vote for him. My man was Edwards, but I was always gonna go with the dem. No surprise here. On Iraq, he will go through the JCS kabuki dance, then draw down to around 50,000 troops over about a year or two. He will redeploy more troops into Afghanistan. On Presidential power, I have no illusions. If he has the power when he goes in, he isn't going to give anything up. I read Savage's book on the Imperial Presidency, and I know this isn't a partisan issue. Cheney/Rumsfield etc just pushed it to the extreme. I just thought Obama would defend the fourth amendment until he got elected, then go for power in other ways.
3) See #2 above.
4) No one, but McCain or Giuliani, could be worse than Bush. Any of the other nominees--dem, repub, whatever--would be better.
Well, McCain's First Amendment Repeal aka "Campaign Finance Reform" has always been a sticking point with the GOP faithful, who--in the end--went with their notion of the best COC in wartime. (You disagree, obviously. Fair enough.) My own version of campaign finance has seven words: "No cash, no foreign money, full disclosure." To the extent that Obama helps bring the whole apparatus crashing down, I'm glad.
But let's please not call what he's opted for anything close to public financing. He can talk all he wants about his millions of small donors, but that's the past few months, since he became the Obamessiah. Last autumn, when he was running forty points behind Hillary, it was the max donations of a small concentration of donors that kept him going. Now that grad students are sending him fifty dollar donations, it's easy to claim that what he's opting for is kinda sorta public financing.
More after dinner.
And on Obama's Iraq policy, try this: Google "Barack Obama Iraq pullout." Of the 1.5 million hits, this is the first sentence of the first listing, from NPR last September:
"Sen. Barack Obama's plan for Iraq includes immediate withdrawal of one or two brigades every month and completing a full withdrawal by the end of 2008."
Is in, zero troops in Iraq six months from now, a full three weeks before his inauguration. Any ambiguity there? And if facts on the ground--Patraeus's success, the Dems' beloved "benchmarks"--have changed, would it kill him to say so?
Seven months ago, when Rush Limbaugh was savaging McCain, saying that either Obama or Clinton would be just as bad, his point re Iraq pullout was, "Don't listen to Obama when he talks pullout. He's lying. He says he'll do it, but he won't."
So . . . was Limbaugh right?
We seem to have reached a strange reversal this time 'round. In 2004, the Dems seemed unified by their hatred of W, and figured Kerry would do. They could overlook his shortcomings. The GOP, conversely, was almost avuncular in its love and protection of W.
This time around, the GOP turns to the left and coughs re McCain on campaign finance, on the global warming hoax, on immigration, just to get an aggressive CIC; and the Dems have bought in on Obama.
You say you wanted Edwards. Okay. A bad choice, in my opinion, but not a wolf-face crazy one. Same with Obama. But to take one example. You say the gun thing is meaningless to you. On an intellectual level I can understand that: these things will be decided by local legislatures and the courts, not the executive branch. But last fall, Obama wrote on his web site, "I support the DC gun ban." And yesterday, having scrubbed that statement from his website, he wrote, "I support the Supreme Court's decision (overturning the gun ban)."
In the wake of FISA, Iraq, public financing, "I can no more disown Reverend Wright than my own Grandmother," I mean . . . doesn't this bother you a little? I mean, not that it would make you less likely to vote for him, but doesn't it bother you just a little?
Joe,
I have class in five minutes, but here is something for now.
I just googled "obama residual troops," and the first hit was http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/9/12/221130/823 The link is from last September, and it's an Obama guy talking on a Clinton site. Third sentence:
"In fact, what I think is interesting is that we're starting to see Obama hedge qualify his previous support of residual troops significantly. A new consensus among the Democratic front-runners is emerging on this issue. Obama was clearly exasperated during the Petraeus hearing, and we're starting to hear that."
I will have a closer look after class, but it looks like last September saw a change in position.
To answer your last question, which I thought I had answered, I am bothered, but the big issue for me is FISA.
Okay, the second google hit for "obama residual troops" pulls up a Shapiro link at Salon. It's from July 2007 just after a dem primary debate when the issue was one of the main questions for discussion among all the candidates.
"I posed an analogous question [about withdrawl] to Obama at a press conference at Dartmouth College in late May. His answer was seemingly more dovish. 'It is hard to say, since we don't know where we will be at in January of 2009. It depends on whether we are able to initiate the kind of based redeployment that I called for back in January. My expectation is that we do not have active combat forces in Iraq by that time.' The January proposal to which Obama referred called for a withdrawal of all combat brigades by March 31, 2008. But the Illinois senator also envisioned at that time an ongoing U.S. presence for force protection, counterterrorism and the training of Iraqi security forces.
A new Democratic-leaning Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security, released a paper last month that estimated the number of troops that might be required for a more limited U.S. mission in Iraq. While the policy proposal by James N. Miller and Shawn W. Brimley was not endorsed by any presidential candidate, it did capture aspects of the notions advanced by Clinton, Obama and Biden. The CNAS paper suggested that an initial U.S. force of about 60,000 troops would be needed for an effective training mission, counterterrorism measures against al-Qaida, force protection and overall logistical support. While this would be a far cry from current Bush 'surge' levels, it would also not fulfill the 'bring the troops home now' mantra of antiwar activists.
So, his position changed September 2007, and I prefer the change. "Flip-flopping" doesn't bother me in and of itself, as all candidates/politicians do it. I never thought Obama hadn't or wouldn't. The real issue for me is if one flips in a way that betrays my trust. Obama's reversal on FISA is horrible. FISA does not need to be amended, and doing so erodes a fundamental civil liberty.
The gun issue, as you say, is a supreme court issue. It's all just rhetoric for the presidential candidates. When I read the amendment, it seems clear enough to me that the language connects gun ownership to the need for militia's (whatever Scalia says), but I also know that guns are as American as apple pie. Reverand Wright? I could care less. I am ashamed that I know little details like that Wright was already gone when Obama left the church. Get it off my tv please.
And that, as they say, is the last word.
Texasyank
You are gracious to leave off, as I know you have many things you want to say. You didn't even dig in on FISA, for example. You officially win the most active commenter award at this site. Thanks. I like comments.
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