Friedersdorf wants me to engage Obama's smartest critics, not his dumbest ones:
Obama has transgressed against what is arguably Congress' most essential check on executive power — its status as the decider of when America goes to war — and he has codified indefinite detention into law, something that hasn't been done since Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. But at least he doesn't torture people! How low we've set the bar.
It isn't that I object to Sullivan backing Obama's reelection if his GOP opponent runs on bringing back torture. Is he the lesser of two evils? Maybe so. But lauding him as a president who has governed "with grace and calm" and "who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name"? If indefinite detention, secret kill lists, warrantless spying, a war on whistleblowers, violating the War Powers Resolution, and abuse of the state secrets privilege don't fit one's definition of "scandal," what does? If they're peripheral flaws rather than central, unacceptable transgressions, America is doomed to these radical, illiberal policies for the foreseeable future.
Ryan Bonneville makes related points. They are perfectly valid, and I cited my criticisms on this score in the piece. I don't think they qualify as "scandals" in the usual Washington sense of corruption or cover-up. I wanted Obama to veto the NDAA and its indefinite detention provision – but the signing statement and the inclusion in the language of the bill that it changes nothing in existing law was, it seems to me, a reasonable compromise after the Senate passed it by a more-than-veto-proof 100 – 0.
In wartime, I believe the government has a right to find and kill those who are waging war against us, if it is impossible to capture them. I don't think wartime decisions like that need be completely transparent – or can be, if we are to succeed. And I think Obama has succeeded remarkably quickly in this new kind of war. He has all but wiped out al Qaeda by drone attacks and the Afghanistan surge. And his success makes these repugnant wartime excesses things that, in a second term, he could ratchet back. Even Bush racheted back in his second term.
But my primary issue has always been torture – the cancer it introduces into our legal, moral and civilizational bloodstream. That has gone. More will, if Obama continues to win this war and gains strength against the authoritarian pro-torture GOP by being re-elected.
Lesser of two evils in this respect? Yes.
The Dish 