Polling about attitudes on issues that concern Americans is close to irrelevant, because the only opinions that matter are the opinions of Beltway Insiders who stay in place from administration to administration, no matter which party gets elected. People like Greenwald complain about how Beltway media types talk about their own opinions as if they represented the majority of Americans. He has shown repeatedly that if they do, it's a coincidence because Beltway insiders don't care what mainstream Americans think about; they only care about what entrenched power thinks about.
And they're probably right. Elite opinion mostly doesn't align with broad popular opinion, but what difference does it make? We elect a congress to get us out of Iraq; nothing happens. We elect Obama to redress the abuses of power perpetrated by the Bush administration, and he and Holder decide they are going to hold onto the executive privileges that have accrued to office through precedents established by Bush. It even looks like he's pushing executive privilege beyond what Bush demanded. Why shouldn't he? If it's a political calculation, he risks more by alienating the power elite than he does the Greenwalds of the world. He or I or anybody can criticize him as much as we want, but what are we going to do next election, vote for Nader and throw the Presidency to the Republicans? The left is being played by establishment Democrats in the same way that the religious right was being played by establishment Republicans.
Is this what Obama wants? Probably not, at least not personally. He perceived it as the political reality that defines the world that he has to work in. He's being told by elite opinion that he can't give up executive power–just not done. Looks weak, or whatever. Have to play the turf game to avoid appearing the doormat Congress or anybody else can walk all over. Undermines the image of executive strength the president must project to a world full predators waiting to exploit any appearance of weakness. I don't know that that's what Obama's being told, but I think it's a reasonable deduction that follows from a basic understanding about how bureaucracies and the people who serve them think. Obama knows that only a minority of people care about abstract issues regarding executive power, state secrets privilege, and constitutional principle, and he hopes that the people who do care about those issues will forget about this and come to support him on
other issues they care about like health care, veterans rights,
education, and support for the middle class.
Obama may not egregiously abuse his executive powers, and he may try to do some good programmatic things that Republicans would never do, but when the right inevitably regains the White House the infrastructure put in place by Bush and left intact by Obama, we can be sure that it will be abused. If Obama turns out to be nothing more than a tool of entrenched elite power, then it's proof that we really have devolved into nothing more than a ceremonial democracy. Fundamental power does not lie with the people; it lies with elites who can be pushed a little this way or that, but nothing fundamental changes about how power works.
I've said this before, but I didn't want to believe it, and I wanted to give Obama a chance. My hope was that Obama would be able to deliver on his promise not to just bring some policy changes but to change the way Washington thinks. I still reserve some hope, because it's early, and there may be strategic reasons for his administration taking these positions on secrecy and executive privilege in the short run. But as each day passes, it appears more and more that even if Obama wants to, that to think he will be able to bring change in any fundamental way is just wishful thinking. The power system rules to benefit its own entrenched interest; elected officials serve it or are destroyed.
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