Mark Crispin Miller: Obama's FISA Statement is a Mess (Just like his Stand on Faith-based Programs) [View All]

[highplainsdem]

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/070708Miller.shtml

Obama's recent rightward moves—concerning BushCo's faith-based programs, and the FISA bill—have both been loudly justified by commentators who would certainly deplore them if it weren't Obama who had made them.

The thinking goes like this: "Obama's our guy, and he's really cool, the candidate of 'change,' so we should cut him all the slack he needs, so he can get elected president. In any case, this recent stuff is not so bad. So let's all lighten up—or else. Because he has to make such moves, or he will lose; and those who criticize him now are only helping the Republicans."

That view is wrong on every count. Obama's moves are not merely pragmatic gestures, like Bill Clinton's "Sister Souljah moment" (to which they've been compared). While "standing up to Sister Souljah" (!) was purely a theatrical display, meant to "send a message" to particular voters, these shifts by Obama have serious consitutional implications, regardless of his good intentions or hisrare skill at finessing what he's done.

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Those who counsel silence on these matters seem to place their party, and its candidate, above the Constitution; and that posture is not just immoral, but gratuitous. All those anxious efforts to explain away Obama's cave-ins, and to halt all critical discussion of them, come from the conviction that he'll lose if there's a whisper of dissent within his camp, or if he doesn't pander to the right.

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If, therefore, they really want to see Obama win, those who keep reflexively defending him should concentrate instead on how to keep the GOP from stealing this election, too (something that Obama seems to think is quite impossible). Such activism would be more productive—and, in the noblest sense, more patriotic—than enabling his collusion in Bush/Cheney's crimes against the Constitution.