Carrie Budoff Brown has a pretty good piece in today’s Politico that takes a look at the Netroots’ disappointment in Barack Obama’s FISA stance. It has quotes from Matt Stoller, Jane Hamsher, and Markos Moulitsas. It also has a quote from Dangerstein:
Dan Gerstein, a New York political consultant who supports Obama and former longtime aide to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), said Obama now needs to stand by his support of the bill, given Republican efforts to brand Obama as a “reflexive, partisan liberal.” “This is really an important initial test for Obama,” he said.
“People will be looking at this to see whether he has the strength and independence to stand up to his friends and a significant support base and say, ‘I think this is right, and I am going to hold firm in my position.’”
It’s no surprise that Dangerstein would try to cast this vote as some kind of test of political independence (and therefore courage) but that’s ridiculous. Here’s the best I can say for Barack Obama (or for Rep. Patrick Murphy, for that matter). Sometimes politicians have to make a decision on a vote. They may oppose a bill in its final form, even when there are parts of the bill that they think are important, or even urgent. And they may realize that the bill is going to pass regardless of what stand they take on it. At that point, they sometimes make a political decision that they’ll get more trouble for opposing the parts of the bill they don’t like than they’ll get credit for supporting the parts they do like. In other words, if they can’t stop a flawed piece of legislation, they have little incentive to open themselves up to criticism for not supporting the good parts of the bill. This is politics, and we all understand that no one likes to take a hit for no good reason.
But contrary to what Dangerstein is asserting, these are not examples of courage or independence. They are examples of raw political calculation. And there is a problem with this specific case of raw calculation. The FISA bill is different from run-of-the-mill bills in two major respects. First, in granting retroactive immunity it does something irrevocable. Congress cannot come back later and undo immunity. Second, it cedes vast new spying powers. Congress could revoke those spying powers in the future, but it is unlikely to do so. For these two reasons, and because the bill defines the scope of the Fourth Amendment by weakening it, the FISA bill has some bedrock principles associated with it. It isn’t the type of bill that you can easily make political trade-offs on. Even if you know the bill is going to pass, you should go on the record against it. That’s why this is accurate:
The Netroots will be watching Thursday as the Senate considers the bill — and whether Obama simply casts his vote or whether he takes a strong stand in a floor speech.
Obama has already disappointed us by both his stance and his rhetoric. It’s clear that he made a decision to try to split the difference by opposing retroactive immunity but supporting the overall bill even if it includes retroactive immunity. Unfortunately, that’s a ship that has sailed. But Obama can partially redeem himself by laying out some kind of plan to revisit the spying powers aspect of the bill after we get the Inspector General reports that are mandated as part of this bill. He should go even further and promise that the passage of retroactive immunity will not prevent the public from learning what actually happened during Bush’s term with unwarranted electronic surveillance. He should support a Congressional inquiry next year to learn what would have been learned in a court of law if immunity had not been granted.
Then he should say that we will revisit the FISA law once we have a better understanding of the facts. I know we are all disappointed, but if Obama makes these promises, it will be a lot easier to swallow this capitulation and it will reincentivize the Netroots to work for his victory.
If we get the sense that Obama is following Dangerstein’s advice, that would be very bad.
