yesterday the senate voted to cover up approximately four hundred felonies committed by president bush. obama voted for the cover up. clinton, much to her credit, voted against it.
what this actually made me think about is the pernicious effects of campaign consultants. last february, when a similar FISA bill came before congress, both clinton and obama were campaigning in the DC area as part of the "potomac primary." obama made a big show of taking a few hour-long break from his campaigning to go and vote against the FISA measure (to his credit, IMHO). clinton, on the other hand, skipped the vote. at the time, the official narrative was that clinton was still viewing herself as the front-runner and was trying to position herself for the general election whereas obama was trying to knock down her presumed lead by playing to the base of the party. i don't know whether the narrative was true, but it had "political consultant" written all over it.
so fast forward to this week. clinton's no longer running for president, she doesn't have those consultants whispering in her ear. and so, i'm guessing, yesterday's vote reflects what she really thinks. obama, on the other hand, has clinched the nomination and is still under the consultants' spell. that's what i think his vote was, a simple political calculation based on what so-called "experts" keep telling him.
the big problem is that i have no respect for the judgment of these "experts." it was probably on their advice that clinton voted for the iraq war in 2002. they urged her to vote for the war to keep herself viable, to avoid the burn felt by politicians who voted against the gulf war in 1991 after that war ended quickly and became extremely popular with the public. that's why every senator with aspirations for the presidency voted for the iraq war. but instead the war vote ended up being a liability. the consultants don't necessarily reflect any deep insights about politics. they just reflect the common wisdom among wonks in washington that i think is deeply out of touch with the mood of the country right now.
if obama had voted against the FISA bill, if he had supported a filibuster as he promised he would, or if he went further and spoke out against the bill, i don't think he would have lost any votes. a lot of the public is only vaguely aware of the FISA thing. the potential obama voters who are following this tend to be the ones who most hate the bill. indeed, at least two of my friends now say that obama has lost their vote.
i'm not going that far, there's never been a candidate that i've supported 100%. it's always the lesser of two evils for me. even after this FISA sellout obama is still clearly better than mccain (who publicly supports the FISA bill, but skipped yesterday's vote), and so it still won't be hard for me to vote for obama. while i wonder if brendan and richard will really follow through with their threat if the polls are close in early november, i do think that obama made a stupid choice on a purely political level.
though i never saw obama as anything but a flawed politician who i happen to prefer over some other flawed politicians, one of the reasons that i wanted him to win the presidency is because i was hoping his election would help to discredit political consultants. as i mentioned above, i really do think that clinton voted in favor of the 2002 authorization to use military force because her consultants told her that she had to if she ever wanted to be president. to have someone who spoke out against the iraq war and made his opposition to the war the centerpiece of his campaign beat her and then go on to win the presidency would illustrate that the consultants are wrong and should not be listened to. his election not only would get a democrat in the white house, but also would show the consultant class to be the fools that they are.
of course, that hope was always kind of naive. the consultant class is never discredited. no matter how much bad advice they give politicians still give them a ton of money for more bad advice. but maybe it would have at least broken the prevailing wisdom among consultants that a democrat has to go right on national security issues in order to remain viable, that's the kind of advice that leads to stupid destructive wars. obama's FISA vote yesterday completely undermines that hope of mine. when he's elected, the consultants can now point to the FISA vote and claim it "neutralized" his anti-war stance.
which is why, even if you put aside the fact that this new law undermines the fourth amendment and effectively covers up president bush's criminal behavior, i am still terribly disappointed in barack.
