Change That Isn't

Almost from the beginning of his campaign Keith Olbermann has been openly supportive of Barack Obama on his nightly show, Countdown. Last night, however he devoted the first two segments of that show to a scathing denouncement of the Obama Department of Justice’s stand on electronic surveillance as reflected in its response to a lawsuit filed by five persons who assert that they were improperly spied upon.

The Obama Administration not only uses the same “state secrets” arguments that its predecessor did, but has come up with a new and even more far reaching one, making a claim to throw out the lawsuit based on “sovereign immunity.”

The argument has been made that Obama cannot do everything at once; that change takes time; that one must walk before one can run; that changes must be made incrementally. While I accept all of those platitudes, I do not accept that any of them support taking actions that which are affirmative continuation of repugnant policies which he promised to end, let alone expanding on those policies with acts that are even more extreme and repugnant.

“Sovereign immunity” means “one cannot sue the King” for God’s sake.

In the first segment guest Howard Fineman explains that “The Obama Administration is balancing two things here.” He describes the first as the people who supported him and propelled him into office; the people who are appalled by the issues of torture and illegal spying and executive overreach.

“Then there is the politics of the intelligence community, the CIA. Obama is an outsider, and he appointed as director another outsider, Leon Panetta. Obama and his people do not want to antagonize the intelligence community because they need them to support them in the war on terror and to get the President’s job done around the world right now.”

He speaks at some length about Obama’s willingness to disappoint the people who elected him to office, to abrogate the promises he made to those who voted for him in order to cater to those who represent the real power of this nation; not the elected government, but the unelected bureaucracy. The intelligence community will not do their job merely because it is their job, but only if the elected government is pleasing to them. The electorate, the people whom this government is supposed to serve, do not need to have their wishes considered.

He goes on to describe why Obama is taking the current stance,

“No president wants to cede any powers that the presidency itself has accumulated, even if they were accumulated by people that the current occupant of the office campaigned against.”

When Olbermann asks about the likelihood of Obama investigating the actions of the prior administration, Fineman replies that the Obama Administration prefers to leave that to Congress but that the Democrats in Congress will not do it unless they can get Republicans to go along with it. So far, unsurprisingly, no Republicans have signed on, so he doesn’t believe that any meaningful investigation will occur.

In the second segment the guest is a professor of constitutional law, Jonathan Turley, and he paints an even more bleak picture, beginning his comments by saying that he believes that the Bush Administration should bring out its “Mission Accomplished” banner.

He says that the Obama position, “Leaves citizens with a right without any protection” in that, while we have the right of privacy, we have no way to enforce that right. If the government chooses to violate that right we have no way to protest or prevent them from doing so, and therefor we effectively do not have that right at all.

He describes the latest Obama Administration stance as,

“They say that the Bush Administration was bad people doing bad things. But it doesn’t matter if you say you’re a good person doing bad things. They’re still bad things. And that’s what this is.”

Right near the end of the statement,

“Our President, I think, is more interested in programs than principles and he never intended to fight on issues like torture and electronic surveillance. And we’re going to have to come to grips with that. … And the people who support him will have to tell him that we will not support him on this. …because of some cult of personality where he’s so popular that he can do anything. He can’t do this. Because what he’s frittering away are the rights that we all have as citizens.”

I had a sinking feeling when Obama voted for the telecom bill during the campaign that he was not everything that he was claiming to be, and I have an even stronger feeling that Turley sums it up quite well; that Obama is “more interested in programs than principles.” If that is true then some important issues are going to fall by the wayside, and this will become a poorer nation for it.

There has been much talk about the 25% who would remain ever loyal to George Bush no matter what he did. We seem to be generating a, what, maybe 50% or so who will remain uncritical of Obama no matter what he does. I am not one of them.

I like a lot of what he is doing. I like a lot about who he is. I’m glad he is my President. I absolutely will not support him trashing the constitution because “he does not want to antagonize the intelligence community.”