I discussed President Obama’s handling of Libya and the federal budget with David Gergen and Matthew Yglesias and guest host Bob Oakes on WBUR’s On Point earlier today. Though I make an effort to keep an open mind, I took strong exception to the way we’ve intervened in Libya so far. And later in the program I suggested that many people across the political spectrum have been disappointed by what they see as a lack of leadership from the president, on issues ranging from the federal budget to civil liberties and national security.
A caller suggested that these criticisms of the president stem from ignorance. The only critic I mentioned by name was Jack Balkin of Yale Law School, a scholar who has been very tough on Republicans and conservatives. I was particularly struck by Balkin’s analysis of the president’s role in legitimating what he and Sandy Levinson call the “National Surveillance State” in a post published last Thursday:
The reasons for the creation of the national surveillance state were multiple; they concerned the rise of digital networks, changes in the technology of warfare, and the concomitant rise of networks of non-state actors as serious threats to national security. These problems would present themselves to any President, whether liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican.
Barack Obama has largely confirmed these expectations, much to the dismay of many liberals who supported him. After issuing a series of publicly lauded executive orders on assuming office (including a ban on torture), he has more or less systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the George W. Bush Administration, employing the new powers granted to the President by Congress in the Authorization of the Use of Military Force of 2001, the Patriot Act of 2001 (as amended), the Protect America Act of 2007, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 and the Military Commissions Acts of 2006 and 2009. These statutory authorizations have created a basic framework for the National Surveillance State, and have made Obama the most powerful president in history in these policy areas.
The choice we face today, therefore, is not whether we will have a National Surveillance State, but the kind of National Surveillance State we will have– one that does its best to protect privacy, civil liberties and internationally recognized human rights in changing conditions, or one that debilitates or eliminates these protections and guarantees, and brings us ever closer to emergency government as a normal condition of politics.
One might have hoped that,given his campaign pronouncements, an Obama Administration would have implemented a framework that is closer to the values of civil liberties. But his record in office has been decidedly mixed, and remarkably similar in important respects to the record of the Bush Administration (with the major difference being that, instead of making unilateral assertions of executive power, as Bush did in his first term, Obama can rely on Congressional authorization of much of what he does as a consequence of the framework statutes I mentioned above.)
As much as I disagree with Balkin on many issues, it is not obvious, to me at least, that his disagreements with the Obama Administration reflect a failure to understand the issues at hand. Balkin can be pretty brash and even obnoxious (or so I’m told), but he is widely regarded as an expert on national security law.
Moreover, I think that while one might disagree with Keith Hennessey on policy priorities, he is certainly knowledgeable about the workings of the federal budget, which is why his criticisms of the president’s approach to the budget ought to carry some weight.
It is a comfort to believe that those who disagree with you are necessarily ignorant. But I don’t think it’s a view that’s very helpful when it comes to weighing the evidence at hand and making informed decisions. My hope is that the president doesn’t share this view.