Andy Freedman, of Silver Spring, was a young volunteer on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, but he nurtured a grain of cynicism.
“Even at the inauguration, I was skeptical that so many people thought Obama coming in would mean everything would change,” said Freedman, 22. “That’s not the way the world works.”
Obama has already given some of his most fervent believers a wake-up call, as key promises to reform government and end Bush administration secrecy and war policies confront the realities of office.
The president on Friday announced plans to revive Bush-era military tribunals for terrorism detainees, with some revisions, after promising as a candidate to reject that system. He also reversed an earlier stance in favor of releasing a new round of prisoner abuse photos, saying the images could endanger the troops.
Since coming to office, Obama has stepped up combat operations in Afghanistan, and his promises to end the war in Iraq and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay are still pending. His Justice Department is using the Bush administration’s state secrets argument in defending lawsuits over warrantless wiretapping — a policy the president said he would revisit.
Meanwhile, environmentalists are withdrawing support of Obama’s plan for global warming fees, saying the current bill has become hopelessly compromised by industry lobbyists. And gay and lesbian groups are upset over Obama’s failure so far to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs sidestepped questions about whether Obama is embracing a new pragmatism and disappointing the hopes of his most fervent supporters.
“I’ll leave it up to people far smarter than me to parse out the thematics of every 16th day over the course of this administration,” he said.
Obama, who promised during the campaign to “reject the Military Commissions Act” that established tribunals for detainees, has not changed his position “in any way, shape or form” on prosecuting terrorism suspects, according to Gibbs. That’s not enough for some of the liberal activists who believed an Obama presidency and a new majority in Congress would bring about meaningful policy change, particularly on issues surrounding detainees and torture.
“There is a lot of outrage out there and for good reason,” said Charles Kuffner, a Democratic blogger at offthekuff.com. “We have wanted from the beginning to see those responsible for [prisoner abuse] held accountable, and that is what we wanted from the last election.”
Kuffner said that Obama “has taken some steps in the right direction,” but may face a backlash from activists.
Freedman, the former campaign volunteer, gave Obama high marks for some of his domestic programs and said he was generally sympathetic about Obama’s tough balancing act.
“He can’t rock the boat as much as he wants to,” Freedman said. “It seems to me that it’s the very nature of the presidency — it tends to function the same regardless of who is in it.”
