Of all the accidental Presidents ever, Barack Obama has a serious situation on his hands. Now, I voted for him. Twice (but only twice, because I have a little bit of a sweet spot for Southern Populists, which got my vote in the 08 primary--much to my embarrassment). But Obama is accidental and by that I mean he's one of those Presidents who inherits a freaked up mess and has to figure out what to do with it.
Accidental, also, because the Bush Administration thought it had a permanent hold on the Presidency: people like Karl Rove expected that there would never be another Democratic President ever and they behaved like it. They set some stuff up that was meant only for them, and now they haz a sad and are rather critical of how President Obama has dealt with the War on Terra and any number of other things. That's how repulsive the opposition is. Mix gall, hypocrisy and a lack of transparency together and you get a Republican. Then a guy like Obama has to inherit a heap of shit, and take the responsibility for it that his predecessors refused to take.
President Obama, however, has embraced all this War on Terra stuff with the kind of vigah JFK reserved for Martha's Vineyard and sailing. I think he's actually done a better job with all of this than Bush ever did. But he has embraced this twisted approach to terrorism and it's a bad fit for Democrats. Because, see, Democrats are better than that except when they aren't, which see ACT, PATRIOT.
Cool your jets, you'll see what I'm getting at after the fold...
The President wanted to close GITMO, and he wanted to do it right away. But then he got a briefing. Then he got another, and he and his extremely competent team (and I'll say it to get it out of the way I'm GRATEFUL that he's the President in the face of the alternatives) discovered something that the Bush administration set up as a sort of Nixonian wet dream and never thought it could fall into the hands of the opposition party. Now, they don't like the fact that the President and his people "got" Bin Laden, and they don't like what we've done in Libya (Bush would have colonized it, for Christ's Sake) and they don't like him having all this power that Republicans set up for themselves, and only themselves. Also, they seem to be somewhat consternated about the fact that he's "Colored", to use a word the GOP is probably familiar with.
This, I think, is the elephant in the room. President Obama is doing what any President would do when they inherit more power than any one man could hope to ever have.
I wish he'd do what I elected him to do: flush out the Nixonian crap, the secret stuff, the constant and endless war which was already won by the Terrorists when they got our liberty-killing reaction to it.
If the President is serious, he'd take us right back to the Tenth of September. Real power, sometimes, requires a person willing to give it up.
/editorial