Yuval Levin observes that Obama’s response to charges that he has reversed himself several times in recent weeks is disingenuous, which it is, since the candidate very carefully evades discussing the actual charges.  You can see how some of the charges bounce off of him, since he was generally a free trader before he became the fire-breathing enemy of NAFTA in Ohio, but that then drives home the point that his statements about NAFTA in Ohio weren’t just “overheated” but also basically dishonest.  He had said that he believed in an individual right to bear arms before Heller was decided, but when asked about the D.C. gun ban in the past he sad he believed it was constitutional.  Suddenly, post-“cling,” when the Court decided otherwise he discovered a new interpretation that put him on the side of the Court’s majority.  Well, he does love consensus, doesn’t he?  Obviously, the flip on the FISA bill, which he vowed to filibuster in its current form and now will support, is substantively the worst and the most obvious of them all, and it is the one the candidate’s boosters have been most shameless in defending.  It is fairly insulting to say that those who think he has changed positions on these particular items haven’t been paying close enough attention, since obviously the first people who even noticed some of these reversals were those who pay attention to the campaign every day.  On cue, Sullivan refers to these as “apparent” reversals, as if there were some doubt that there had been a change.

Viewed in a certain way, you can argue that everything Obama has done is consistent with his general views and his habit of avoiding confrontation, but this is not very flattering for Obama and it is even less flattering for his conservative admirers.  As a supporter of the PATRIOT Act, Obama has never exactly been a champion on civil liberties, so when he said that he would filibuster the FISA bill it was may have been nothing more than pandering and a refusal to court confrontation during the primaries.  Once he became the nominee, he wanted to avoid confrontation with the telecoms and the executive, which was easy enough since he has been a fair-weather civil libertarian all along, because to be anything else would be to court resistance and opposition from entrenched power in the government and the media.  On the whole, a pattern emerges where Obama will never challenge a constituency or an interest group at the time when it can damage or derail his advancement, but once he has used them he will be quite willing to throw supporters overboard to appease the demands of the political establishment.  I guess this is what some people consider to be smart politics, but it makes you realise how apt Samuelson’s old line about Obama representing the “sanctification of the status quo” really was.  Even more appropriate was Samuelson’s judgement:

By Obama’s own moral standards, Obama fails.

P.S.  Obama has voted for cloture, which paves the way for bringing the legislation to the floor for a vote.  As far as I’m concerned, that negates any significance of voting with Dodd and Feingold on their amendment regarding telecom immunity.

Update: Obama also voted for final passage.  Greenwald has a new post on the legislation.

There seems to be quite the concerted effort to obscure what the “compromise” FISA legislation does.  There is a lot of reassuring language about oversight and safeguards, which ignores the heart of the issue.  This is it:

The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates “an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people” is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite — it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.

What does this mean in practice?  From Balkinization, here is part of the answer:

This sort of “vacuum” surveillance could not be approved under the old FISA scheme, which requires either that the calls be wholly international, or that the interception be made overseas, or that the NSA demonstrate evidence in advance that the target is an agent of a foreign power. Under the new law, the NSA can engage in surveillance where none of those three criteria are met.

There is no obvious limit to the communications that could be targeted for surveillance.  Warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional and dangerous to a free society.  At the very least, we should understand that the “compromise” bill will give a Congressional rubber-stamp to unconstitutional acts by the federal government on an ongoing basis.

The disappointment-generating machine that is the Obamacampaign is firing on all cylinders, judging from laments such as this one:

Only an idiot would think or hope that a politician going through the crucible of a presidential campaign could hold fast to every position, steer clear of the stumbling blocks of nuance and never make a mistake. But Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.

You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.

This is why so many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer.

One issue or another might not have made much difference. Tacking toward the center in a general election is as common as kissing babies in a campaign, and lord knows the Democrats need to expand their coalition.

But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

The word that you keep seeing in columns and posts about Obama’s recent reversals is “lurch.”  In fact, lurch is the wrong word to describe what has been happening.  The entire process has had much more of the feel of a stage magician using misdirection to make you see things that aren’t real and ignore those that are.  When he makes complete 180-degree turns on a given question, he will either maintain that he never really changed his position or that the reason you think that he changed his position is that some campaign staffer (who probably doesn’t even work for him, if you press him) goofed up.  Occasionally, such as with the FISA legislation, the change will be too obvious to deny, so he plays on the audience’s expectations that in the future he will actually revert back to his earlier position. 

Here’s Obama today according to The Caucus:

“One of the things you find as you go through this campaign, everyone becomes so cynical about politics,” Mr. Obama said.  There is an “assumption that your must be doing everything for political reasons.”

Certainly, Obama’s supporters have to believe that what he has been doing recently has been for “political reasons,” unless he would like them to believe that he wants to trample on the Fourth Amendment.  If his flip on the FISA legislation wasn’t done for political reasons, why on earth would he have done it?  You know, aside from the obvious answer that he wants to increase the power of the executive to make it more powerful for the time when he is President.

What is more disturbing than all of this is the willingness of his cult followers supporters to believe his latest statements, even though they might directly contradict something he said not very long before.  His oracular utterances don’t need to be consistent, because they are his statements, which must make them true, right?  This is what happens when people are optimistic: they expect things that cannot happen and are then made all the more bitter and dissatisfied when those expectations are not met.  Optimism is one of the worst mental and spiritual afflictions, because it feeds desire and attachment more than almost anything else, and so necessarily leads to the misery that comes from the dashing of unrealistic hopes. 

Update: Tom Bevan notes the remarkable agreement between Herbert and Lowry, and says:

On the other hand, the fact that polar political opposites have come to the same unflattering conclusion about your political maneuvering is a warning sign that you are in danger of damaging your brand and losing support among some portions of the electorate.

James notes the formation of a new Serbian government described in this article.  The article is the usual sort of moral preening-as-political reporting one has come to expect from the IHT and other papers when discussing all things Balkan.  Take this absurd sentence for starters:

Kostunica, a nationalist, helped lead the revolution that overthrew Milosevic in 2000 but has since embraced an anti-Western position [bold mine-DL].

No doubt in the limited imagination of IHT reporters, there were/are only two positions for Serbs to take: an anti-Milosevic/pro-Western line and an anti-Western (and therefore pro-Milosevic) line.  The idea that a Serbian nationalist might respond poorly to the collective anti-Serbian line of American and western European governments seems to be quite beyond this correspondent.  It must be Kostunica who has “embraced” an anti-Western position; he cannot be responding to provocations and insults from the West.  More to the point, the article’s interpretation makes no sense. How is an alliance between the Socialists and Democrats necessarily “unlikely”?  They are both parties of the left, and they are basically in agreement about the main controversial issue of the day, which is that Serbia should retain sovereignty over Kosovo.  Even though the Democrats are more inclined to play lackeys to the West, Tadic opposes Kosovo independence.       

Meanwhile, it’s not clear to me that James’ response to this news makes that much sense when you consider the following sentence from the article:

Cvetkovic said he would fight to ensure that Kosovo remains part of Serbia [bold mine-DL]. He said Belgrade would continue to provide economic support for ethnic Serbs in the territory, which declared independence in February.

Even if the Democrats supported letting Kosovo go (which they don’t), opposing Kosovo independence would have to have been a condition of establishing the coalition government.  If the EU insists on making Serbian membership conditional on letting Kosovo go, it is EU membership that Serbia will abandon. 

It has been a mere four months since Kosovo “independence” was declared.  The folly of attempting to partition Serbia has only just begun to have its effects on the region and the rest of the international system.

In Obamaworld, apparently wrecking the Fourth Amendment is roughly equivalent to ridiculing some obscure rapper.  The only thing more depressing than the conceit that supporting unconstitutional measures is a way to “signal” to swing voters that you are not a radical loon bent on “ideological purity,” which is basically to make defending the Constitution a position held only by radicals and extremists, is the dishonest representation of support for the compromise legislation as being a pro-civil liberties position.  Ellsberg wrote at Antiwar’s blog the other day:

What the administration seeks, and this bill provides, is permanent warrantless surveillance.

Greenwald has more, and here is his response to Obama’s statement on the FISA bill.

Update: John Nichols traces the history of Obama’s position on the FISA bill.  Inasmuch as his opposition to this bill powered him to victory in Wisconsin, which was, as most of us acknowledged at the time, the beginning of the end for Clinton, he owes his nomination to the stand that he has now repudiated.

You can give a nudge. ~David Cameron

Cue James’ pained cries of outrage.

As a practical matter, James at first seems to be right when he says:

But if paleos want to dial the US down from global hegemony, as they should, they’ve got to recognize that other countries — specific other countries — do indeed need to dial their participation up.

I say that it seems right at first, because it would be far easier to hand off the interventionist and guarantor role to other powers than it would be to simply shut down our myriad bases, dissolve NATO and attempt to play the part of a normal country.  Without some other poor fools being suckered into responsible natons leading the way in taking over the obligations we needlessly maintain, many Americans would be reluctant to leave the other nations to their own devices, so finding a replacement would make the transition go much more smoothly.  However, that’s the trap: there is no other power or combination of powers both capable and willing to fill this role, so we are supposed to think that we are stuck with it.  There is also an assumption that seems to be widely shared that there will always have to be some outside power capable of acting as an emergency protector.  It is probably more correct to say that some power or alliance of powers will tend to take on such a role, but I am much less certain that there is a need for one. 

One of the main reasons why no other powers attempt to shoulder more of the burden of their own defense is that they believe it to be unnecessary, because they have become dependent on U.S. security guarantees and, in the last resort, our nuclear deterrent as well.  If they have come to rely on us for things that they obviously ought to be providing for themselves, is it any wonder that there is no urgency in taking more of an interest in international conflicts far away?  Among our Asian and European allies alone, you find enormous wealth and human capital that could be directed towards securing stability in their own regions and near-abroads.  One of the reasons these resources are never directed toward such ends is that the U.S. does enough that it is not a priority for their governments.  Once what is optional becomes necessary, the priorities of those governments will have to change, but the only way to make it necessary is to begin the process of weaning (I cannot think of any other way to describe the process) our allies off of dependency on the U.S.  The only way do that is to start doing it, rather than waiting on the dependents to take over responsibilities that we refuse to give up. 

On the whole, I think the “developing” world would fare much better over the long term if its internal political and military conflicts were left to the nations directly involved to resolve.  There would, of course, be a place for foreign investment, humanitarian aid and diplomatic mediation, but the best way for nations to achieve some sustainable stability and prosperity is to make their own way without the promise/threat of foreign meddling.  Had U.S. history been marked by extensive foreign interference in our internal affairs, there would have been great distorting and stunting effects on our political life.  Whatever degree of independent political life we enjoyed on account of fortune, timing and favourable geography, interventionists tend to want to deny to other nations–and almost always with the intention of benefiting them!  That needs to stop, and the best way to do that is to stop meddling.

The recent Madhuri Dixit film Aaja Naachle has an impressive concluding number that retells the story of Layla and Majnu (or Leila and Medjloom, in Sayat Nova’s poetry), the romance of the lovers Layla and Qays.  Watchthewhole thing.  Here is my translation of Shat mart kose from earlier in the year, in which Sayat Nova drew on the imagery of Layla-Majnu.

If, however, Obama is now linking a U.S. troop presence to “stability,” that’s a very big deal. ~Michael Crowley

Quite right, as I was sayingthe other day.  Crowley continues later in his post:

This still begs the questions of what Obama would do about those “more volatile areas.” He says here that he would withdraw from them “later.” Just how much later is the key question. 

Remarkably, his supporters seem to be more than willing to take him at his word in his clarifications and simultaneously to accept the explanation that his earlier statements were simply poorly-phrased or obscure.  As someone who has made a point of defending Obama’s actual record and policy positions against unfounded and often unfair portrayals of his views and who thinks that you can discern his views from what he says, I take very seriously that the candidate means what he says when he seems to tie withdrawal to the stability of Iraq.  If that is his position, as it seems to be, that does seem to contradict the message he has been sending for the last year and a half.  

Josh Marshall:

Now, I can already hear a lot of people rising to the bait and saying, ‘No, we need specifics, a timetable, a date certain, because we’ve been hearing this for years — that we’ll be out as soon as we can, as soon as this that or the other happens.’

And I’d agree.

But this makes the point. Most people who are so keyed into specifics and hard deadlines are that way because we’ve had five years of a policy of deliberate deception in which vague promises of bringing the troops home in the pretty near future are hung out in front of the public’s collective nose as a means of obscuring the real policy of keeping American troops in Iraq permanently as a way of securing oil reserves and projecting US power and in the region.

But antiwar people are “rising to the bait” because it is intolerable to make U.S. withdrawal contingent on things that Washington cannot control and which are also unlikely to happen in the next several years.  To withdraw as soon as possible is very different from withdrawing as soon as Iraq is stable.  The first implies getting out relatively quickly, while the other creates the possibility of deferring withdrawal indefinitely.  Furthermore, once you have committed to making sure that Iraq is stable before leaving, you have made yourself a hostage to events and to the internal politics of another country.  It gives America’s enemies every incentive to sponsor proxy forces to create chaos in Iraq, which Washington will then feel obliged to quell, and so we will remain bogged down for a decade or more.  Then the longer we stay, the more remote the possibility of leaving becomes, since the advocates of remaining will be able to say, “Not even Obama was willing to risk instability in the region, so why should we do it now in 2029?”  And so we have come full circle, with the very people who denounced defenders of regional stability as despot-lovers urging us to remain in Iraq in perpetuity for the sake of stability, and somehow they have been so successful in their efforts that even the putative antiwar candidate feels compelled to go along.

But as editors at the Atlantic magazine, they are really part of the newly emerging neoliberalism in various new institutions and projects in Washington. They draw on the ideas and thinking of this neoliberal crowd, the future heart of the Democrat party, rather than the conservative and free market think tanks and institutions that form the intellectual base of the Republican Party. ~Peter Ferrara

Ross and Reihan can defend their case on their own, I’m sure, but a few points need to be made here.  The meaning of neoliberalism here is vague, and I expect that it is deliberately vague so that it can include what Ross and Reihan are proposing, but if it is meant in any way other than referring to the support for global free trade that goes by that name it seems to me that it is not correct.  Certainly, it is misleading in another way, unless you want to conflate the neoconservative tradition, from which Ross and Reihan are consciously drawing, with the domestic neoliberalism of the last twenty years.  It would also be misleading when you consider Ross and Reihan’s own description of neoliberalism as “very much an ideology crafted by the upper-middle class, reflecting their concerns and their prejudices in its mix of tough-on-crime posturing…liberal internationalism…fiscal conservatism…and social liberalism.”  It is the last one in particular that distinguishes Ross and Reihan from neoliberals in a significant way. 

Meanwhile, it is doubtful that neoliberalism is actually the heart of a future Democratic Party, and as I noted in a piece for TAC last year the progressive wing of the party had already started declaring the demise of neoliberalism in the wake of the ’06 midterms.  Perhaps they were premature in their declarations, but even to the extent that progressives are not going to repudiate certain aspects of the neoliberal legacy neoliberalism represents the Democratic Party’s past much more than it represents its future, or at least that’s the way it appears right now.  In some respects, the neoconservative and neoliberal traditions do converge or run on parallel tracks, but from what I find in GNP I do see some important differences with neoconservative social policy as well.  In their emphasis on family formation and stability and particularly in their natalist proposals, Ross and Reihan’s vision represents something noticeably different from both neoliberalism and neoconservatism, which is to say a policy agenda that actually concerns itself with the interests of families in both economic and cultural terms.     

As I have outlined before in a column earlier this year and in many blog posts, I do not share Ross and Reihan’s confidence in meliorism oriented towards conservative goals and I share Ferrara’s doubt that operating through the welfare state for conservative ends is possible.  It seems to me that Ferrara does score some hits when he questions the efficiacy of the GNP agenda as policy, especially concerning tax credits, and he is right to insist on entitlement reform, but it also seems hard to deny that Ross and Reihan are correct that, as an electoral matter, Republicans have won landslides and majorities in Congress when they have run to reform the welfare state rather than abolish it.  Ultimately, Ferrara doesn’t seem to disagree that this should be the approach, but dislikes the specific proposals in the book. 

There are redeeming features in the GNP vision, some of which echo the concerns of many dissident conservatives, and one example of this is the book’s paired goals of “economic independence and cultural solidarity.”  On the whole, I would say that the goals of a wide distribution of wealth and power and cultural solidarity are goals that Bolingbrokean paleos share with the authors, and where we have differed over the years has been over the question of how to secure the independence that comes from such a wide distribution of property.  The danger of social stratification according to class, which in turn reinforces itself through stratification of access to education and wealth, is a real one, and Ross and Reihan correctly examine the role of mass immigration in exacerbating income and social inequality. 

Where I tend to agree with Ross and Reihan is in their critique of “leave us alone” politics, but we find fault with it for different reasons.  While the latter does represent a real constituency, this sort of politics typically expresses itself in policies that make an idol out of a certain kind of deregulation without also taking any interest in distribution or decentralisation.  From the decentralist and distributist perspectives, this simply enables a different kind of concentrated wealth and power, corporate power, to emerge alongside and in collaboration with concentrated government power.  The “leave us alone” politics wars (often only rhetorically) against one kind of dependence to help create another, and the harm that this does to the nation’s social fabric is dismissed as inevitable or as positively desirable upheaval.  This relates to one of the central insights of George Grant into the problems of American conservatism, which has precedents in old-fashioned Jeffersonian suspicion of concentrated wealth and power, and this is that reducing the size and scope of government will simply expose the people to an economic oligarchy unless those concentrations of power are not also decentralised.