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When a Country Gets Lost -- And Finds Its Way Back
By Bernard Weiner (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)
In addition, Bush has taken many of his mid-level political appointees and placed them under the civil-service umbrella in jobs overseeing energy and science experiments for which they are not trained or have no experience. Being civil service employees makes it virtually impossible for the new president to get rid of them. ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2008/11/18/BL2008111801832_pf.html ) In effect, they would be moles inside the new government in key positions to harm or hamstring Obama's environmental policies. Among many others complaining about this last-minute tactic by Bush are scientists angry ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/21/AR2008112103359.html ) that political ideologues with no scientific training will have important input on scientific policy.
AUTHORITARIAN-TYPE RULES
2. Many of the authoritarian rules and precedents established during the CheneyBush years are still in place, and could be abused by Obama or presidents who follow him. True, Obama's transition team has listed 200 of Bush's executive orders that they will rescind quickly with the stroke of a pen. But some of the larger issues are still hanging out there:
* The overuse of presidential "signing statements" to nullify aspects of laws passed by the Congress, as part of the "unitary executive" theory of government, which theory basically turns the president into a near-dictator;
* The policy of "pre-emptive war," attacking a country that is not an actual imminent threat to the U.S.;
* The use of torture as official state policy;
* The nullification of the legal concept of habeas corpus from American law, whereby a judge has to certify the legitimacy of an arrest;
* The employment of massive domestic spying on and data mining of American citizens, including eavesdropping without a court warrant on phone conversations, snooping into mail, examining personal computer files without the knowledge of the citizen, etc;
* The throwing of citizens into jail as suspected "terrorists" or "enemy combatants," with no access to lawyers; etc. etc.
All of these violations of the Constitution's Bill of Rights, in the Patriot Act and elsewhere, have been enacted on a regular basis during the past eight years of CheneyBush. How much of this will be quickly and aggressively reversed by Obama and how much will he keep some of these police-state tactics still in place, just in case he wants to use them?
TRUST OBAMA TO DO RIGHT THING?
Which brings us to a key dilemma facing the progressive base of the Democratic Party: After eight years under CheneyBush, during which the U.S. was lost in a dark ideological/corrupt shadow world, President-Elect Obama promises us, finally, the return of light in our politics so that we can find our way back to some higher level of moral/spiritual/social health. He probably won't take the country as far in that regard as many of us might wish, but his landslide victory did break the back of the CheneyBush HardRight as an all-powerful movement and offers us, yes, hope for significant change and progress in righting many of the wrongs of the past eight years.
As many of us have been saying for months now, if you believe Obama will do, or even can do, all of the many things he's promised, you're in for a rude surprise. Obama is not a radical or progressive in how he operates; he's a pragmatic centrist, with liberal leanings but beholden to many of the same economic and political forces that have great influence in contemporary politics. But he's an unusually intelligent politician, open to argument and persuasion. That's why we on the progressive left must speak out forcefully when we see him straying from positions that we think can be most useful in repairing the damage of the past eight years.
So here's the nub of our current dilemma, much talked about in liberal/progressive circles: How much should we trust Obama to do the right thing and thus hold back our criticisms of his actions and policies during this interregnum before he actually is inaugurated as President and during the first few-months "honeymoon" period? And how much should we start criticizing him now for his sins of omission and commission, especially with regard to his somewhat more hawkish foreign/military policies? (See Jeremy Scahill's "This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House.") ( www.alternet.org/story/107666 )
SLACK VS. PRESSURE
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