January 12, 2009
It was almost one year ago when the conservative National Journal rated Barack Obama as “the most liberal senator in 2007”. Of course, that was back during the primary season of the 2008 Presidential campaign, when many people believed that the “liberal” moniker should have been enough to sink Obama’s Presidential aspirations. Now, with the Inaugural just a week away, we are hearing the term “centrist” being used to describe Obama, often with a tone of disappointment.
On Sunday, January 11, David Ignatius wrote an op-ed piece for The Washington Post, entitled: “Mr. Cool’s Centrist Gamble”. Mr. Ignatius spelled out how Obama moved toward the political center after his election, beginning with the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff, to appointing a Cabinet “which is so centrist it almost resembles a government of national unity”:
Since Election Day, he has taken a series of steps to co-opt his opponents and fashion a new governing majority. It’s an admirable strategy but also a high-risk one, since the “center,” however attractive it may be in principle, is often a nebulous political never-never land.
Obama’s bet is that at a time of national economic crisis, the country truly wants unity.
The President-elect’s appearance on ABC’s January 11 broadcast of This Week with George Stephanopoulos motivated Glenn Greenwald to write on Salon.com that the interview:
. . . provides the most compelling — and most alarming — evidence yet that all of the “centrist” and “post-partisan” chatter from Obama’s supporters will mean what it typically means: devotion, first and foremost, to perpetuating rather than challenging how the Washington establishment functions.
Mr. Greenwald (an attorney with a background in constitutional law and civil rights litigation) began his article by taking issue with the characterization by David Ignatius that Obama’s centrist approach is something “new”. Greenwald pointed out that for a Democratic President to make a post-election move to the center is nothing new and that Bill Clinton had done the same thing:
The notion that Democrats must spurn their left-wing base and move to the “non-ideological” center is the most conventional of conventional Beltway wisdom (which is why Ignatius, the most conventional of Beltway pundits, is preaching it). That’s how Democrats earn their Seriousness credentials, and it’s been that way for decades.
Greenwald then focused on a point made by Mr. Obama in response to a question posed by George Stephanopoulos concerning whether the detention facility at Guantanamo will be closed within the first 100 days of the new Presidency. The President-elect responded that:
It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize and we are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom who may be very dangerous who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it’s true. And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn’t result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up.
The magic words in Obama’s response that caught Glenn Greenwald’s attention were: “creating a process”. Why should due process require creation of a new process outside of our court system? Mr. Greenwald suspects that this “new process” will be one that allows for the admission of evidence (confessions, etc.) obtained by torture. If what Mr. Obama has in mind is a process that will protect the secrecy of legitimately-classified information, that is one thing. Nevertheless, I share Mr. Greenwald’s skepticism about the need for an innovative adjudication system for those detained at Guantanamo.
George Stephanopoulos made a point of directing Mr. Obama’s attention to “the most popular question” on the Change.gov website. It came from Bob Fertik of New York City, who asked:
Will you appoint a special prosecutor ideally Patrick Fitzgerald to independently investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?
The response given by the President-elect involved a little footwork:
We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing.
Glenn Greenwald’s analysis of Mr. Obama’s performance on This Week, did not overlook that part of the interview:
Obama didn’t categorically rule out prosecutions — he paid passing lip service to the pretty idea that “nobody is above the law,” implied Eric Holder would have some role in making these decisions, and said “we’re going to be looking at past practices” — but he clearly intended to convey his emphatic view that he opposes “past-looking” investigations. In the U.S., high political officials aren’t investigated, let alone held accountable, for lawbreaking, and that is rather clearly something Obama has no intention of changing.
Obama’s expressed position on whether to prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration is fairly consistent with what he has been saying all along. Frank Rich covered this subject in his January 10 New York Times editorial:
The biggest question hovering over all this history, however, concerns the future more than the past. If we get bogged down in adjudicating every Bush White House wrong, how will we have the energy, time or focus to deal with the all-hands-on-deck crises that this administration’s malfeasance and ineptitude have bequeathed us? The president-elect himself struck this note last spring. “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” Barack Obama said. “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”
Henry Waxman, the California congressman who has been our most tireless inquisitor into Bush scandals, essentially agreed when I spoke to him last week. Though he remains outraged about both the chicanery used to sell the Iraq war and the administration’s overall abuse of power, he adds: “I don’t see Congress pursuing it. We’ve got to move on to other issues.” He would rather see any prosecutions augmented by an independent investigation that fills in the historical record. “We need to depoliticize it,” he says. “If a Democratic Congress or administration pursues it, it will be seen as partisan.”
Welcome to Barack Obama’s post-partisan world. The people at the National Journal are probably not the only ones disappointed by Obama’s apparent move to the political center. It appears as though we will be hearing criticism about the new administration from all directions. When he disappoints centrists, you can read about it here.
Grasping Reality With The Opinions Of Others
In the course of attempting to explain or criticize complex economic and financial issues, it usually becomes necessary to quote from the experts – often at length – to provide an understandable commentary. Nevertheless, it was with great pleasure that I read about a dust-up involving Megan McArdle’s use of a published interview conducted by Bruce Bigelow of Xconomy, without attribution. The incident was recently discussed by Brad DeLong. (If you are a regular reader of Professor DeLong’s blog, you might recognize the title of this posting as a variant on the name of his website.) Before I move on, it will be necessary to expand this moment of schadenfreude, due to the ironic timing of the controversy. On March 7, Time published a list of “The 25 Best Financial Blogs”, with McArdle’s blog as number 15. Aside from the fact that many worthy bloggers were overlooked by Time (including Mish and Simon Johnson) the list drew plenty of criticism for its inclusion of McArdle’s blog. Here are just some of the comments to that effect, which appeared on the Naked Capitalism website:
For my part, in order to discuss the proposed settlement resulting from the investigation of the five largest banks and mortgage servicers conducted by state attorneys general and federal officials (including the Justice Department, the Treasury and the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) I will rely on the commentary from some of my favorite financial bloggers. The investigating officials submitted this 27-page proposal as the starting point for what is expected to be a weeks-long negotiation process, possibly resulting in some loan modifications as well as remedies for those who faced foreclosures expedited by the use of “robo-signers” and other questionable practices.
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism criticized the settlement proposal as “Bailout as Reward for Institutionalized Fraud”:
The perspective taken by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns focused on the extent to which we can find the fingerprints of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on the settlement proposal. Ed Harrison emphasized the significance of Geithner’s final remarks from an interview conducted last year by Daniel Gross for Slate:
From there, Ed Harrison illustrated how Geithner’s roadmap has been based on the willingness to follow that logic:
Will those of us who refuse to believe in Tinkerbelle face the blame for the next financial crisis?