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2009-04-26 Home Front: Politix
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Kass: The campaign's over, Obama; it's time to lead
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In Europe, he chastised America for what he called our "arrogance." In the Caribbean, he gave the dictator of Venezuela a warm smile and a handshake, and called him "amigo." Before the Saudi king, he bowed low and long.
And just the other day, in a cynical nod to Turkish generals, the American president who campaigned for human rights quietly avoided the word "genocide" in a resolution marking the anniversary of the 1915 Ottoman Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenian Orthodox Christians.
A few years after that slaughter, as he prepared to engage in his own genocide of the Jews, Adolf Hitler was credited with saying: "Who remembers the Armenians?" The United States may remember, but our president can't call it genocide.
Still, President Barack Obama offers himself up to an adoring world -- and the enraptured, Hopium-smoking American media that helped elect him -- as a leader more flexible than his hopelessly rigid predecessor, George W. Bush.
And he's proved it, charming nations and their leaders, remaining in campaign mode, where he's most comfortable.
But last week, he bowed to his base in the hard political left by reversing himself, opening the door for the prosecution of Bush Justice Department officials who helped develop harsh interrogation policies for suspected terrorists.
Some call it torture and legitimately oppose it. Others say harsh interrogation -- such as waterboarding -- was necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But what Obama accomplished by opening the possibility of political witch hunts was to offer up one of his own eyes to his political supporters. He needs both eyes to see a dangerous world.
The week began when Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, appeared on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos to reiterate Obama's pledge not to prosecute.
"He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided," said Emanuel, no fool. "They shouldn't be prosecuted. ... It's time for reflection. It's not a time to use our energy in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution."
Two days later, Obama abruptly changed course to please his anti-war base that demands a few severed political heads.
"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say, that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general," he said. "I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved there."
His critics used phrases such as "chilling effect" on intelligence gathering, but I call it the pucker factor. In all bureaucracies, it rolls down hill.
Reporters are kind of like intelligence gatherers. We don't waterboard politicians, but we're under pressure to get good information. So, let me tell you a story.
In 1985, I was a kid in the news business, and our gossip columnist, Mike Sneed -- now at the Sun-Times -- got the story of the year: "Reform" Mayor Harold Washington had been secretly taped pressuring a fellow to get out of the 3rd Ward aldermanic race. It sounded like raw politics. It didn't sound anything like reform. And Washington was enraged.
Jim Squires, then our editor, decided to publish transcripts but tell readers the tapes were leaked by Washington's white ethnic political opponents who wanted to embarrass him. Fair enough.
Then he ordered me and another young reporter to find Sneed's source and walk back the cat. I didn't want to do it, but he was the boss and Sneed understood, and after a few days, he dropped his harebrained scheme.
Yet for a long time afterward, sources worried they might be outed. Reporters were concerned their bosses might investigate their sources. And in the gathering of political intelligence, when sources start puckering up, they're not going to kiss you. You get scooped.
And some editors shriek, "How did you get scooped?!" even when they knew that the boss made a decision that sent spasms through everything. More spasms ensue. The pucker factor multiplies exponentially.
Obama isn't an editor. He's the president of a nation targeted by terrorists and constantly probed for weakness, even by our allies.
His intelligence gatherers -- and others who give them the tools and the go-ahead -- can't spend their time wondering if he has their backs.
His statements surely sent spasms through bureaucracies that are vital to his own success and America's safety. All because he wanted to campaign, rather than lead.
Our president has a fine ear for language and nuance. Yet sometimes he shapes his principles to fit the moment, something anyone who watches Chicago politics understood years ago. The Democratic machine candidates he eagerly endorsed for re-election -- from Boss Daley II to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger to disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- are testament to Obama's flexibility.
But he must stop campaigning someday, and start thinking like a chief executive. And he'll need both eyes to see where he's got to go.
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Posted by mom 2009-04-26 12:37||
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Posted by DMFD 2009-04-26 17:46||
2009-04-26 17:46||
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Posted by Besoeker 2009-04-26 21:35||
2009-04-26 21:35||
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