The blogs won’t let it go. Nor will the army of blog readers –– not on this site; we have a very select audience –– who for the most part are expressing, loudly, a sense of having been betrayed by Senator Barack Obama over the F.I.S.A. legislation.
It is, of course, a matter of moral high ground: the Senate, with considerable assistance from Democrats, has now granted not only civil immunity to the telecom corporations for their complicity in widespread criminal behavior but retroactive authority to a criminal gang which initiated it. Not only that. It also purports to legalize behavior which is manifestly illegal under the Fourth Amendment.
This is extremely serious business.
For much longer than the nearly-eight years of the current regime, the U.S. Constitution has been hacked at by the government. As a direct product of the last four administrations, the First, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments have been systematically broken. No free country can survive the ruination of its founding documents.
Obama knows this.
Had I been in the room for the conversations, had I been consulted for my opinion in the discussion about the impending F.I.S.A. bill, I am not at all sure what I would have advised.
Obama could have stood against the bill. He could have expressed in eloquent terms the danger to the nation of any further erosion of the Constitution. In terms of the affect of this on the legislation itself, it is unlikely that a majority would have stood with him. Passage would be likely in any event. But a strong stand, if coupled with a fight to prevent imposition of cloture, might have enabled other Senators to hold the floor in successful filibuster.
Obama would then have been in the position of participating in, perhaps leading, the filibuster itself. Whether this would have killed the F.I.S.A. bill is not clear. Maybe. But what then?
What then might have turned out to be a McCain election in November.
That is not a small matter, either.
Speaking only for myself, I do not need to see more of the kind of politics which buries truth beneath expediency and which elevates rationalization to the level of character. Unfortunately, however, living as I do in America, I am unable to avoid the view. And it seems evident that there is only one real-world chance, perhaps only this single election, to bring the country back from what appears to me to be the very brink of disaster.
The transferrence of power in America to a ruling group which excludes both the people and their congressional representatives, abetted by a mass media which censors dissent as it whores for empire, is now a genuine possibility. It must be stopped, if that is possible.
I don’t personally know Barack Obama, have never met him, and I base my sense of him, his heart and his character, on his first book, “Dreams From My Father”, and on his speeches. If, as I believe, Obama and his advisers are fully aware of what’s at stake, then they must win. We’ve run out of symbolic ‘victories.’
We are already seeing the early stages of what will likely be the dirtiest campaign in a century. Major “news” organizations have so far tried to kneecap Obama with Jeremiah Wright, the flag pin on a lapel, a “terrorist fist-bump” (F*x News), a former Weather Underground leader named Ayers, and the rumor that the candidate is really a Muslim.
Lots worse garbage than that is already flying around the internet. ‘Jokes’ about race and assassination. Watermelon patches. Every remaining trace of the country’s worst shame is coming out now, all the ‘nigger-haters’ set free to spill poison into the national bloodstream. Equal rights never happened, and we know it.
Obama is not naive. This particular moment in history may offer an unlikely window to an unlikely candidate. Antipathy to George Bush and the Republican Party makes possible not only an Obama victory but a landslide in Congress. But there will be no Obama victory if the subconscious fears of most voters can be made to override their better hopes.
John McCain is, in truth, a crazy man. But the degree to which he is well-regarded and protected in the mainstream media has been revealed recently when General Wesley Clark’s hardly controversial comments were met with such a ludicrous firestorm. Clark merely said that being shot down during wartime does not qualify a person to be President. He was pilloried by everyone, charged with “demeaning” McCain’s war record. Several “commentators” tried to parallel his remarks with the “Swiftboating” of John Kerry.
That is the “news” environment in which this Presidential campaign is being fought.
With McCain’s only hope the possibility of sowing doubts about Obama’s “capacity” to “keep America safe,” and Hillary Clinton’s helpful “Commander-in-chief threshold”, Obama would be foolish to hand any ammo to that crackpot or his friends on television.
In my opinion, Obama did not betray anybody in voting for the odious F.I.S.A. bill. Legislation can be changed; in fact, the only prospect for criminal investigations is in an Obama Justice Department, and as the Senator remarked about this bill in April, it contains no immunity to criminal prosecution. Were he to lose the election over the F.I.S.A. bill, there would be no way back.
The reason I am still not sure how I would’ve advised him is that there appears to me the possibility that in standing against the F.I.S.A. legislation he may have enhanced his electoral appeal. McCain would’ve been able to use the issue, but Obama would’ve established a stronger profile.
You may find this quite cynical, but I suspect that option was thoroughly discussed in that meeting, among those people, and ultimately considered too great a risk.
Look, I’d like to live in the America I was raised to believe in. When you’re raised to think highly of your country, it’s natural to develop expectations. I haven’t been able to expect much in maybe forty years. The political “center” in my country has gone, in the words of John Mitchell, “so far to the right” I do “not even recognize it.”
And if all of the above isn’t enough, we’ve had two straight presidential elections stolen, the last one using electronic means which still exist four years later.
That’s the real situation. Obama’s campaign has to deal with it. I’m not sure which direction he ought to have taken with the F.I.S.A. bill, but I am very appreciative that this campaign is serious about winning.