“A turning point for Obama”: How the president learned to love the national security state
"NYT reporter Charlie Savage tells Salon the real reason why Obama has broken less from Bush than many hoped"
by ELIAS ISQUITH, Salon
"One of the great mysteries — and ongoing controversies — of the Barack Obama presidency has to do with his record on civil liberties and counter-terrorism. In fact, for many former supporters of the president, it’s the alleged continuities between the anti-terror policies of Obama and Bush that first caused them to rescind their support for the former. Charges that Obama is worse than Bush, because he legitimized and gave bipartisan cover to that which was once seen as radical and divisive, are not uncommon.
So now that Obama is about to entire his final year in the White House, and now that attention is increasingly turning away from him and toward his would-be successors, it seems like an opportune moment to reassess the past seven years and figure out why, exactly, Obama’s record on counter-terrorism issues has been so controversial — and mixed. Which is where “Power Wars: Inside Obama’s Post-9/11 Presidency,” the new book from the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charlie Savage, comes in.
Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Savage about his book, which is both a deeply reported history of the Obama administration and a look at how bureaucracy, chance, politics and technology have so profoundly shaped its legacy. Alongside discussing what Obama really promised on the campaign trail in 2008, we also talk about the outsized influence of late-2009’s failed “underwear bomber,” and why the president has less control over the prosecution of leaks from his administration than you may suspect."
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/07/a_turning_point_for_obama_how_the_president_learned_to_love_the_national_security_state/
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