Ezra Klein: What would the Obama campaign think of the Obama administration?

[flpoljunkie]

Wonkbook: What would the Obama campaign think of the Obama administration?

By Ezra Klein

This will be the first Wonkbook lede that isn’t about economic or domestic policy. It’s just about right and wrong. Over the weekend, the Obama administration forced the State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley to resign. The reason? He’d told the truth.

You may only hazily remember the name “Bradley Manning.” He’s the young soldier accused of passing thousands and thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks. I say “accused” not because his guilt is so doubtful, but because he has not yet stood for trial. At the moment, he is simply incarcerated. And in an apparent act of revenge, his captors are subjecting him to sleep deprivation, prolonged time in isolation and continuous nude spot-checks -- conditions that Daniel Ellsberg calls “right out of the manual of the CIA for ‘enhanced interrogation’.”

Asked about Manning’s treatment at a speech in Cambridge recently, Crowley made the obvious points: it’s “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” This made life difficult for the administration, and so Crowley -- rather than the officials responsible for putting Crowley and every other administration member into the position of defending Mannin’s treatment -- was forced to resign. The message of this is horrendous. “Crowley’s firing will make it even less likely in the future that decent public servants will speak out against such needless sadism,” writes Andrew Sullivan.

The Obama campaign was only three years ago, but it had strong opinions on this sort of thing. “To lead the world, we must lead by example,” Candidate Obama said in October of 2007. “We must be willing to acknowledge our failings, not just trumpet our victories. And when I’m President, we’ll reject torture - without exception or equivocation.” But now we find there is both exception and equivocation -- and the administration is purging those within its ranks who publicly say it should be otherwise. This is a moment in which both those who serve in the administration and those who support it need to ask whether the Obama administration is keeping sight of its values now that it holds power. The tradeoff between security and moral purity is always more difficult for a president than a candidate, but as we saw in the Bush administration, the pendulum can swing too far towards security, in a way that does little to make us safer and erodes who we are. Crowley’s firing is a sign that that may be happening to the Obama administration.

[Tesha]

1. It hardly needs to be said, but Candidate Obama would be heartily campaigning against...

...President Obama.

Tesha

[NoTimeToulouse]

4. Sadly you seem to speak the truth.

Does one have to give up the very value of human rights once they take the oath of office?

[Beacool]

8. Well said.

:7


Why am I laughing?

:(

[Vinca]

2. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Now we know why Shrub and his cohorts weren't tried for war crimes.

[xchrom]

3. Interesting. Nt

[treestar]

5. Why would this not be the same in the case of every single President?

A campaign can't run the Executive Branch. A campaign doesn't know what is there beforehand. Stupid, stupid stuff.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. That does not give one license to engage in deeply cynical

self promotions that are false. You seem to suggest that there can be no expectation of honesty at all, because the job is so different from the campaign. Well if that is the case, why bother to listen to campaign rhetoric at all, if it is just blather, meaningless, unfounded words to be cast aside in a flash. Why even listen to some bugger spout off about 'change' if 'status quo' is the end result?
Are you really saying that all campaign words should be seen as lies, that the 'yes' of Obama does not always mean 'yes' but is sometimes filled with spin? The faith he claims condemns gay people expressly forbids the use of language in anyway less than perfect, precise honesty.
You call the expectation of basic honesty 'stupid stuff'. Amazing.

[jefferson_dem]

7. Interesting.

I respect Ezra and will give this a closer read. So this is another illustration of how lofty ideals trumpted on the campaign trail may have crumbled when confronted with real world circumstances. Welcome to American politics...

[ProSense]

9. This is exactly what's happening

<...>

The Obama campaign was only three years ago, but it had strong opinions on this sort of thing. “To lead the world, we must lead by example,” Candidate Obama said in October of 2007. “We must be willing to acknowledge our failings, not just trumpet our victories. And when I’m President, we’ll reject torture - without exception or equivocation.” But now we find there is both exception and equivocation -- and the administration is purging those within its ranks who publicly say it should be otherwise. This is a moment in which both those who serve in the administration and those who support it need to ask whether the Obama administration is keeping sight of its values now that it holds power. The tradeoff between security and moral purity is always more difficult for a president than a candidate, but as we saw in the Bush administration, the pendulum can swing too far towards security, in a way that does little to make us safer and erodes who we are. Crowley’s firing is a sign that that may be happening to the Obama administration.

<...>

Yup. One person, Manning, who no one has any confirmation that he's being tortured, and all signs point to him being treated like every other prisoner, is being used to claim that Presidents have to make tough decisions. "(As) we saw in the Bush administration, the pendulum can swing too far towards security in a way that does little to make us safer and erodes who we are."

What Bush did wasn't about friggin security.

Bush's Glib Waterboarding Admission Sparks Outrage

Reminds me of Manning having to sleep in his underwear. Same thing.

[flpoljunkie]

11. No one knows exactly what's happening, but what we hear is deeply concerning and not what we

expected from the man we elected president. We expected better. Did you read this? I find it disturbing.

Manning was arrested last May in Iraq after telling a former hacker that he had leaked vast amounts of classified material to the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks. He was subsequently transferred to Kuwait, where he was detained for about two months before being moved to the brig in Virginia.

For most of his time at the brig, Manning has been held in highly restrictive pretrial confinement while awaiting a mental-health hearing to determine if the court-martial case against him will proceed to the next step. Designated a maximum-custody detainee under prevention-of-injury watch, or POI, he is confined to his cell for all but an hour a day and has a number of other restrictions placed on him.

Until recently he was allowed to sleep only in boxer shorts and was told the restrictions were meant to prevent him from harming himself. But last week, that changed.

After authorities denied an appeal from the soldier to ease up on his conditions and cited risk of self-harm as justification, Manning quipped to prison personnel that he could just as easily harm himself with the elastic waistband in his boxer shorts. That’s when a chief warrant officer at the brig ordered Manning stripped him of his undershorts as well, according to Manning’s civilian defense attorney David Coombs, who recounted the incident on his blog.

Coombs called the move “clearly punitive in nature.”

In January, Coombs filed a formal complaint after his client was abruptly placed on suicide watch by the commander of the brig. During the suicide watch, Manning was confined to his cell around the clock, while a guard sat outside watching him. He was also stripped to his underwear, and his prescription eyeglasses were taken from him and returned only during the one hour a day when he was permitted to watch television and read.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/brian-manning/

[OwnedByFerrets]

13. Reminds me how this administration still allows

renditions. Some things HAVENT changed.

[Avant Guardian]

10. Obama went after Hillary for insurance mandates in her HCR plan

...

[OwnedByFerrets]

12. I suspect that the same thing happened to President Obama

that happened to President Clinton.
Clinton was taken aside VERY shortly after his inauguration and told, " We know what you campaigned on....however, this is how things are really run in Washington."

[PurityOfEssence]

14. If the audience approved of it, it would sing its praises; if the crowd had misgivings, it would too

He's with you, regardless who you are.

It's a gift...or at least a gift card.

[Ramulux]

15. When Ezra Klein is calling you out

you know you are in trouble.

[Arkana]

16. Yeah, I'm sure Obama hasn't been able to feed or bathe himself

since reading this.

He's probably just sitting in a corner and rocking back and forth, staring into space, shaking.

[ClarkUSA]

17. Ezra Klein's next column: What would the Hillary campaign think of Hillary working for Pres. Obama?

Ezra's next next column: What would Bubba's first presidential campaign think of him being Poppy Bush's "adopted son"?

Stay tuned! Coming soon to a slow news day near you... :sarcasm:

[Clio the Leo]

18. "in an apparent act of revenge, his captors are subjecting him...."

We all have our hot button issues and it's a pitty that he's allowing this to affect his writing. Doesn't quote a single administration source in that piece.

[Ikonoklast]

20. He quoted the opinion of Maning's lawyer.

As we all know, lawyers never lie or stretch the truth in defending their clients.

[Skittles]

19. they are one and the same

to anyone who was paying attention