Obama, in the midst of undoing so many of Bush's abuses of secrecy, just focused on the mother of all secrecy ploys, the "State Secrets Privilege," and has initially signalled that he'll continue abusing it like Bush did.
You know what they say about absolute power and all. Lest you think I'm a praiser of saintly Obama, that's precisely why I wrote a post some while back about not drinking Obama's Kool-Aid, either (that post also quotes the below-mentioned Glenn Greenwald, who nails the dynamic of presidential power better than anyone else I've read).
The brave pikemen of the Right will probably ride in shortly clutching the Weekly Standard to tell us all that Obama has now adjusted his expectations in the face of sobering badness and isn't that grand, 'cause maybe we won't all die now, or some other hogswallop. If only life were so simple. Those on the Right–or the Left–who cheer on abuse of power often seem to forget they're cheering on anti-democratic tendencies. It's not right, even if your side does it.
Here's Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic, misrepresenting me and every other "civil libertarian who voted for Obama" I know:
… civil libertarians and others who voted for Obama did so with the belief that his judgment and his attorney general would be better stewards of that privilege than President Bush and his attorney generals (and vice president.) Obama certainly never promised Americans that he'd declassify everything, or that the government had to renounce its right to assert a state secrets privilege forever.
Of course, as Greenwald rightly and righteously points out in commenting on the same story, Ambinder is sending out the crew that I'm beginning to think is the real enemy of all American politics, the old strawman gang. What civil libertarian is calling for Obama to "declassify everything" or "renounce [the] right to assert a state secrets privilege forever"? Bueller? Anyone? No one's that freaking stupid.
Personally, I voted for Obama not with the belief but with the hope that his judgment and his attorney general would undo 100 percent of Bush's abuses, but with the expectation that a 60 percent reversal amid the muck of Washington would probably be an exceptionally rosy outcome.
The same article does offer a glimmer of responsible behavior:
According to the Justice Department, AG Holder is reviewing all state secrets claims to make sure they meet certain legal tests.
It is, to be fair, a complicated issue and the case involved is itself a doozy. They haven't irredeemably shut the door. Regardless, if we don't do our share of speaking up for what's right, it will be all too easy for Obama to let some important principles slide. It's our responsibility to hold him to the standards he himself has espoused, not to assume he won't abuse the privileges of the office. The Right did that with Bush, and he played them for fools. Let's not repeat their mistake now that a Democrat holds the office.
