Submitted to a Candid World

Obama voted for the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – read, wiretapping) compromise. Deal with it.

Let me clarify. Apparently some Obama supporters out there in the connected series of tubes are disappointed that our man has given the go-ahead to some degree of secret wiretapping, voting for and supporting the new wiretapping bill, which includes immunity for telecom providers who complied with then-illegal warrantless taps. Covert wiretapping, of course, is a hallmark of the Bush years (who else would try to secretly circumvent a secret court?), and Obama is taking a risk by passing on even a modicum of the Bush agenda. But here’s why he’s doing the right thing.

First, the cynical. Obama may just be doing what’s politically expedient. What he says now is very important for signaling to the electorate what his values are, but his actions today also have very low predictive value for what he’ll actually do in office (Bush taught us that). Obama can praise Bush-expanded FISA up and down, and still be free to push against it once he’s elected. He may anger a few liberals – people who’ll already vote for him anyways – but a moderate tack now is one step closer to shedding the leftist label. Expedience over honor, that’s the general election, and it’s high time we played that game.

Second, the transcendent. Obama may actually believe that Bush was partially right on FISA; he may be genuinely willing to cede the issue to the Republicans, and may genuinely differ from the liberal hard-line. If that’s the case, that’s good in and of itself. As president, Obama will have to choose his battles, and compromise with Republicans and conservatives on some issues. We can’t afford another eight years of bitterly partisan, with-us-or-against-us, black & white politics. If Obama has to pick some issues to compromise on – and he does – I think FISA is a fine choice.

So, again, the parties are advised to chill. Personally, I think Obama’s acting on the second impulse, and reaping the political benefits as a side note. Maybe I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I’m actually glad to see the man who’s likely to be our next president thinking through which battles he ought to fight. I’m pretty far left (*gasp!*), but I won’t demand Total Victory the way Karl Rove and the Bush administration have: good governance requires compromise.

The same goes for Obama’s support for faith-based initiatives. If you recall these little wonders from 2001, they were the proverbial canary in the mines on the Bush administration: the signal that maybe he didn’t fully understand church/state separation. In fact, though, they’ve turned out to be low-impact, feel-good measures that haven’t, independently of the president, worn down the church/state wall. Good for Obama. I say keep ‘em, win over the evangelicals, and move visibly to the middle. Fine.

I have mixed feelings, though, about Obama’s critique of the Supreme Court’s decision to limit the death penalty to only murderers. The Court’s decision (holding that the death penalty is “cruel and unusual” as applied to convicted child rapists) is unsurprising – it’s strictly in line with precedent – and it’s also morally right. The death penalty is an abomination: take this from a man who spent eight hours today trying to exonerate an erroneously convicted, now executed, Texan. We oughtn’t compound the error, and confound our legal history, by expanding the death penalty beyond its historical limitations.

Here, Obama might’ve either done the expedient thing, or possibly just compromised too much. The death penalty enjoys wide support, and is easily spinnable against its opponents – “Obama doesn’t want to execute rapists” is a nasty little tag line – making critiquing the Supreme Court the easy thing for Obama to do. It’s still not the right thing.

But enough about Barack. Let’s consider the last issue – the death penalty – from the other side. Here’s McCain on the Supreme Court’s ruling:

It’s a peculiar kind of moral evolution that disregards the democratic process, and inures solely to the benefit of child rapists. It was such a jarring decision from the Court that my opponent, Senator Obama, immediately and to his credit expressed his disagreement. My opponent may not care for this particular decision, but it was exactly the kind of opinion we could expect from an Obama Court.

McCain’s rhetoric is disheartening, and especially ought to disabuse us of the notion that he’s a “moderate.” Instead of attacking the decision on legal grounds, he’s going entirely on emotion, declaring that nothing is too evil for certain individuals. That position is fine, and even defensible. But what’s worrying about it is that the rhetoric is entirely inconsistent with McCain’s stated belief that torture is wrong: McCain is using the same argument to justify the death penalty (“these people don’t deserve the law!”) that torture advocates use to justify “enhanced interrogation.” The root argument – that the value of human life is fungible – is the same, and McCain doesn’t bother to explain why it works for some but not others. This suggests to me that McCain either hasn’t thought the issues through, or is quite comfortable saying what needs to be said, and then changing on a dime.