One of Chris Bowers’ pet peeves, and I admire him for it, is when Democrats justify their actions by reference to the political ramifications of their actions. A recent example was provided by Steny Hoyer:
In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party – one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens.
Bowers cringes whenever he sees Democrats use such nakedly calculating and defensive rationales for their actions. So should we all, because it reeks of weakness. But there is another pet peeve Bowers has, and that is the use of Republican talking points, or ‘framing’ issues in Republican terms. Here is where there is a major divergence in our thinking. And it’s difficult to explain because I agree with the stupidity of using Republican frames. I just think the issue’s importance is grossly exaggerated, particularly by fans of George Lakoff. Too often, how things are phrased is taken to be more important than what is meant. Too often, the careful parsing of words becomes a substitute for a broad-based analysis of the political considerations at play. Bowers does this in his post today.
He takes a look at Obama’s statement explaining his position on FISA:
“The bill has changed. So I don’t think the security threats have changed, I think the security threats are similar. My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.”
Bowers takes this comment to mean that Barack Obama just isn’t that interested in the Fourth Amendment and that he supports warrantless wiretaps despite having previously stated that he does not support warrantless wiretaps. First of all, Bowers is going beyond what Obama actually said and missing what he meant.
I don’t care whether the telecommunications corporations get immunity per se. I know there is the issue of equal justice and all that, but there can potentially be some forgiveness if the telcos were acting on assurances from the highest reaches of the administration. The big problem with immunity is that it will prevent us from getting the facts about what happened and making a fair judgment about whether the telcos deserve leniency. In all likelihood, once retroactive immunity is granted, the American people will never learn the extent to which our privacy was violated. But that is ultimately up to the next administration. If Obama is elected and we have a Democratic Congress, there is no legal obstacle to hauling the telcos before Congress and having them testify about what happened. There’s no reason that Obama’s Justice Department can’t reveal a declassified version of an internal investigation. In response to that information, Congress can craft new legislation, including legislation that strengthens our privacy rights. I don’t want to get people’s hopes up that this will happen, but it could. That is why retroactive immunity is not the real problem per se. Far bigger problems are involved in the increased spying powers and diminished oversight that is in the FISA law. Bowers jumps to conclusions with this:
Yes, Obama might agree with us, and probably capitulated for political reasons. However, as he said himself, he never really cared about telecom immunity all that much. As such, it is extremely unlikely that he will bother to do anything behind the scenes to fix this. There is no “secret plan.” He just doesn’t care all that much.
It’s actually impossible to tell what aspects of this bill he really cares about and which aspects of this bill he doesn’t really care about. His actions contradict his words to some degree because he promises to ‘work’ to strip the bill of immunity (the part Bowers assures us he doesn’t care about) while he also promises to vote for final passage because “the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people.”
Bowers quotes Obama from last November saying “We are not a nation that wiretaps without warrants.” The problem with that is that Obama is supporting a FISA bill that expands the circumstances under which the government can do just that. Of course, the details of this are complicated and involve things like basket warrants, bulk collections, lack of accountability for violations, and weakened oversight. So, it isn’t a straightforward contradiction for Obama to support this FISA bill because the FISA bill doesn’t come right out and allow warrantless wiretapping.
It’s easier to see what Obama is doing politically than it is to know what he really believes and intends to do about warrantless wiretapping in his administration. Obama is splitting the difference on the FISA bill. He opposes retroactive immunity and will ‘work’ to strip it from the bill. But if the choice comes down to passing FISA or not passing FISA, he is going to vote to pass it. What this indicates is that he’s not willing to let this campaign become a referendum on spying powers, where he takes the side of civil libertarians against the side of fearmongerers. It doesn’t tell us, necessarily, what policy Obama really supports. It tells us what battles he’s willing to fight in this campaign. Bowers frames this issue in the context of the 2002 Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq (AUMF-Iraq) vote. Of the 29 Democratic senators that voted for the AUMF-Iraq, how many of them did it despite being opposed to the policy because they were afraid of the political consequences of being opposed? And how many voted for the AUMF-Iraq because they actually agreed with the policy? The answer matters because the people that voted out of fear can be expected to vote the right way under more favorable circumstances, but the one’s that actually agreed with the policy are going to be a continual problem.
I think that’s a fair analysis. We know that John Edwards and John Kerry were convinced to vote for the AUMF-Iraq by their consultants that advised them a ‘no’ vote would cripple their electoral chances. That’s quite different from Joe Lieberman, who enthusiastically backed the policy of invasion. And we can see the difference in the way these three senator’s careers have diverged in the ensuring six years.
Barack Obama didn’t have a vote on the AUMF-Iraq, but he did speak out against it at the time and he gave all the right reasons for opposing it. And that already shows that he had better judgment than Edwards and Kerry because even in 2002, Obama had presidential ambitions. In fact, he was in the middle of a campaign for Senate.
I want to be clear that I forcefully disagree with Obama’s FISA decision on the merits because I think the issue at hand is important enough that he really ought to be willing to take on our civil liberties as a major part of the campaign discussion. People think Bob Barr is going to take all his votes from John McCain, but Obama is inviting a good chunk of his potential voters to go over to Barr. He could easily lose more votes to Barr than he avoids losing from independents and disgruntled Republicans. It’s not a clear-cut political advantage for Obama to punt on final passage of the FISA bill.
I would not advise Obama to take on this battle if I thought it had a serious chance of costing him the presidency, precisely because he can come up with other remedies once he is president. But I think he’s safe and may even derive an advantage in taking a stand for civil liberties.
What Bowers fears is that Barack Obama actually agrees with Dick Cheney about FISA, or doesn’t really care much one way or the other. I don’t think there is much evidence to support that fear. Certainly, I don’t think Chris’ narrow parsing of Obama’s rhetoric is convincing.
Obama’s decision here doesn’t tell us whether he’s a progressive or a centrist. It tells us that Obama is not going to make the issue of FISA a centerpiece of this campaign. It’s hard to know all the reasons for that decision. One reason might be that the bill has enough Democratic votes that Obama can’t stop it. I’d like to think he could convince the caucus if he tried hard enough, but I haven’t been privy to those conversations. Russ Feingold has been clear about his disappointment in his colleagues’ attitudes. That is evidence that Obama may not have had the clout to stop this bill even if he had tried. If that’s the case, it may be that Obama just isn’t willing to make a disagreement over FISA a centerpiece of this campaign when it is going to pass anyway. And that speaks to his political instincts (which may be flawed or savvy) more than to his true ideological makeup.
The bottom line is that our choice this fall is going to be between John McCain and Barack Obama. The media, the consultants, the Republican fearmongering, the money people, the need to attract independents and soft Republicans, all conspire to move Obama to the center. That doesn’t mean he isn’t the most progressive candidate for president we’ve seen in thirty-four years. I still believe he is.
