Sword and Sextant

So, in all this terror/torture/war/etc. debate, Obama has roundly criticized the former President at every turn about just about everything as it relates to national security. I won’t catalogue the points of tension here, but I will highlight another interesting facet.

Obama has maintained nearly every vestige of power that Bush supposedly raped the Constitution with.

1) The wiretapping program has been continued unabated.
2) Obama is careful to reserve the right to “torture” as he calls it, despite blasting its practice.
3) He has talked about the need to hold some terrorists without trial, albeit in a nebulous fasion.
4) He recently suggested trying to port our Gitmo gang to “third countries”, which is very similar to what we already had in Gitmo, as well as maintaining the power to do so.
5) He hasn’t left Iraq yet, largely due to our successes and their fragility should we leave.
6) He’s poured more troops into Afghanistan and Pakistan, and politicked our weak-kneed allies in Europe for more aid (he was told no, of course).

I will spare everyone, including myself, the wailing about the media refusing to cover this obvious story, and instead ask why. Why is Obama running the ship so similarly to Bush so far? If he is so different, where are the differences in national security? Why don’t the speeches match the actions?

My answer is that he is altering his views based on the intelligence he now has. Even though damning these practices he’s careful to maintain, the President is doing what he must to keep us safe. The intelligence, operatives, and troops are shaping his policy, and not the other way around. This is pretty sound governance, although there are ways to avoid taking a crap on the people you secretly further the cause of. Still, why the disconnect?

Let me also posit that there is an episode of “30 Rock” about that I believe conveys my impression of Obama. Liz Lemon starts dating a doctor who is such a great looking guy that everyone does everything for him. For example, he gives tennis lessons to women, despite being truly horrible at tennis (they simply want to be around him), and he orders whatever he wants at a restaurant, regardless of if its on the menu, and they give it to him. He mispronounces words and people just are happy to say it his way. He’s in a bubble, and eventually Liz leaves him because he won’t leave the bubble.

If that anecdote is too obtuse, I’m saying that Obama lives in the bubble. Being a biracial, charismatic, highly-intelligent agent of change that people are willing to buy into made Obama a superstar from his last days at Occidental through Harvard to Hyde Park, and of course to DC. Everything he says is right, and he did it for the best reasons, in great earnest and wisdom. Hitching on to the Obama bandwagon is a truly enriching adventure, and simply adhering without making waves is the easiest way to get a piece of the pie. Similar things happen to child actors. They find that everything they do and say is correct, and buy in to themselves.

I am not claiming that Obama will go down in flames or drugs (or flaming drugs), but I think he feels the need to publicly lash out at what his politics tell him to, like suspension of habeas corpus, overseas detention facilities, waterboarding, war efforts, etc. to avoid being “wrong”. In the bubble, you are never wrong, you see. There is merely nuance we cannot understand. If Obama seemingly takes a stance counter to his actions, the onus is on us to understand him, or simply follow without question. Regardless of his actions, he’s right, even if it means playing Bush on national security matters.

Another example of the bubble-mindset: Obama has constantly tried to hold executives accountable for their corporations’ financial outcomes, but so far, Obama has dumped several billions into Chrysler and GM which are now gone (and forgiven by Obama himself), but there is no accountability for that. We just can’t grasp that what Obama does is above reproach, and yet corporate executives need pay limits and performance checks even over the boardrooms of those companies. The money he allocated and lost is not the same as the money lost by CEOs, in some sense we cannot comprehend.

He’s seized banks through the TARP program, and yet they aren’t getting any better, despite breathless assertions that only the government can save us from this crisis. According to Sec Geithner, not one bank is fixed, as of yet. Similarly, the TARP program hasn’t loosened the credit markets one bit, and the American production system is grinding gears at the moment. Surely this level of incompetence merits apologies/firings/changes? No, GMAC was overthrown yesterday. We just lack the ability to comprehend that Obama is doing the right thing, regardless of repercussions or results.

This is further demonstrated when Obama holds speech after speech waging war with the past, asserting that our problems are just not his fault. In the bubble, it makes perfect sense. No one tells him its his fault, and the people who think it is just don’t get it. Even though the deficit is a monster compared to Jan 20th, the deficit is Bush’s fault. If Guantanamo Bay is a carbon-copy of his want to keep terrorists overseas without trials, but Gitmo undermined our security, its still for the best somehow. If he wastes as much money as GM executives ever did, Obama is still right.

The saddest part of this story is that bubbles have a shelf-life. Eventually, beauty fades or basic performance becomes more visible than pretty words and lofty sermons. The bubble, like all bubbles, will eventually burst, and the outside environment comes rushing in to equilibrate the system. Someone will notice that Obama is wearing a Bush costume, just as someone will eventually report that the economy looks no better after two months and one trillion dollars of consumer debt. The President is in for some harsh days when that bubble bursts, when even the inner circle can’t ward off those little people who just cannot grasp the nuance.

The bursting bubble will also leave the American people hoping for a new kind of change.