In a word, yes . . . sort of. In retrospect, though, it's hard to see how he could have played this any other way from a standpoint of vulnerability---and since he's holding all the cards right now, a safe bet is the hand he should be playing.
In his statement on the FISA bill this afternoon, he did at least acknowledge:
It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.
Now I'll admit, that's rather thin gruel for those of us who'd like to imagine Obama joining Chris Dodd next week on the Senate floor, using his inspiring Websterian oratory to lead a filibuster of the bill. But I think that Obama has actually read the political tea leaves astutely on this, and has taken what (for him) is the prudent course of action, even if it means looking the other way at a lot of Bush Administration lawbreaking until after the election.
Why? Because Obama figures to have plenty of Swift Boating ahead of him, primarily on matters related to foreign policy and the war on terror. By acceding to this "compromise" legislation, as thoroughly crappy as it is, he goes a long way toward taking the "soft on terror" trope off the table as a card for the GOP to play against him. It also helps to soften any future blows he may take for his stand on habeas corpus for prisoners at Guantanamo, and it starts to heal the rift amongst the Democrats in Congress that divisive bills like telecom immunity have been cynically crafted by the Republicans to exploit.
Look at it this way: Obama's already signaled his willingness to bring a gun to the GOP knife fight this summer. If you look at today's message as a silencer of sorts, it all starts to make a lot of sense.
Now, granted, this is going to be a somewhat bitter pill to swallow for some of his followers---myself included---who like to think of Obama as a genuinely principled politician all of the time. However, I think Obama's been around long enough to know that in politics, there are times to stand up for principle, and times to sacrifice principle for expediency. In the case of administration criminality, the time for the Democratic Congress to have taken a principled stand was about five minutes after the 110th Congress was sworn in a year and a half ago. Now, though, the only thing that matters is getting Obama elected to the Presidency. To the more idealistic among us, that may seem an excessively Machiavellian rationalization, but at this point in the game, what's our alternative?
As we have seen over the past year, Obama hasn't made too many rash and ill-considered moves in his campaign from the get-go, and it's hard to see how his statement today, as deflating as it may be to some of us, is anything other than another coolly calculated maneuver from a card-player who knows when to check, when to raise, and when to double down. I know I should be pissed off on principle, but I'm mailing him another 50 bucks all the same.
---Vitelius
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