Bush Hatred has now claimed its ultimate victim, and it isn’t George W. Bush. This time the victim is Barack Obama, who has been pushed, seduced, tricked or merely beguiled into ripping the scab off the debate about “torture,” which is not what he needs in the least.
The base simply loves it, but Democrats from red states, or states turning purple, may be turning purple themselves as they think of the consequences. According to the first polls taken on Tuesday though Friday last week, 58% of the public doesn’t want to hold hearings, and majorities don’t mind the idea of advanced interrogation if it helps prevent further attacks.
Whatever Moveon.org thinks, Democrats have more to lose from hearings than Republicans do, on at least six different counts:
· It will give Republicans the chance to hammer home to a nationwide audience the overlooked fact that Bush did keep the country safe from attacks for seven-plus years when no one expected it.
· It will bring out the fact that many Democrats did sign on for “torture” (and for the war in Iraq) at the beginning, and only backed down when Bush and the war grew unpopular. The backing-and-forthing about this as they try to explain this will surely be riveting, if not to these solons themselves.
· Obama wants people to concentrate on his agenda, which he plans to roll out fairly shortly. They won’t. Not with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other high-profile congressfolk calling each other liars on CSPAN and cable TV.
· Obama wants to pass his program with some sort of GOP backing. Good luck with that when they think his hyenas are throwing them to the prosecutorial wolves. Meanwhile, his promise to “change the tone” has gone glimmering.
· It feeds into the long-standing theme that Democrats are weak on defense and security. “The GOP watchword is ‘weakness,’ and North Korea+ Cuba +Iran +smiles + Hugo Chavez+ plus the possibility of U.S. officials worried about prosecution = an argument,” writes Rick Klein in the ABC weblog, The Note.
· It raises the stakes for Obama, in ways he won’t like. As the IRA terrorists said when they barely missed blowing up Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the civilized have to be lucky all of the time, while terrorists win if they’re lucky just once.
Obama had better hope that no one is “lucky” while he is in office, or the “I told you sos” will be flying fast. And if any one of them is “lucky” in the next 30 years, whoever is president will point to the “chilling effect” of Obama’s decisions, which kept the intelligence agencies from doing their job.
He drove the best and the brightest out of the business, for fear of being sued later. He made those who remained apprehensive, and afraid to grill or press suspects. They were overly cautious and so did not do their duty, and no one found the dots that might have been connected.
He can hedge on his words, but the fact they were uttered puts them on the table. The damage is done, and is out there, forever. He can’t take it back.
Why did Obama, at the height of his power, give in to Moveon.org? He has them already, they’re not going anywhere, and he won’t need them for years. The people he needs are the critical cohort that swung from him to McCain-Palin between the Republican convention and the fiscal collapse, and then swung back to him even harder when the Republicans (in Congress, even more than the candidates), did not seem to handle it well.
These people – independents, and “soft” party members – are the ones who elected him, the ones he’s not sure of, and the ones he should court. They are not amused by unhinged or highly partisan antics, and while they may have wanted Bush-Cheney retired, they do not want them hung.
Richard Nixon, who should know, said at his exit that hatred destroys you, and Moveon.org should have learned from the master. The shot aimed at Bush bounced off on their hero.
The country is more vulnerable now, and so is Obama. Well done.
Examiner columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
