The FISA thing is more or less a done deal now; the we’ve been waiting to turn on obama crowd has turned, while the obama can do no wrong types are hoping against hope that, um, each leap of logic will be the leap… home.
It’s kind of sad, really, watching progressive-minded people I agree with on many things, and have agreed with over the years, work so hard to convince themselves that what they see happening isn’t what’s actually happening. It’s like the penultimate scene in newsies, when Christian Bale has joined forces with William Randolph Hearst and the strike-breakers and started scabbing against his own faux-union in exchange for his personal freedom; the ones who believed in him the most turn on him most viciously, except the smallest of the bunch, who tries to calm the crowd- he’s foolin’ ‘em, the kid declared, hope in his voice. you’ll see! he’s foolin’ ‘em!
Barack Obama is not foolin’ ‘em, but if you really and truly believed that every issue precious to you would be one over which he would expend political capital then, well, you are probably a quick jump from voting Nader anyway, and your support was always going to be fleeting. I’ve been saying for a while now that Obama is worth a hell of a lot more as a representation of change than as a human being who will buy me a new bicycle and tuck me in at night. If you feel betrayed by that, well, you may not have been paying enough attention- with a Congress that actually works for and genuinely represents us, we do not need the President to be our only source of hope, and having him as President helps make that possible. Allowing yourself to be genuinely embittered by it means that you expected too much, and were bound to have your heart broken sooner or later. He is a politician. Of course he is. He’s running for president.
Meanwhile, the he’s foolin’ ‘em kids are embarrassing themselves, clinging to vaguely-worded and unenforceable lines like try to remove telecom immunity as proof that he really is who they’ve believed in all of these months. If you are the leader of the majority party, and despite Harry Reid’s title, that is what Barack Obama actually is, then you do not need to try to remove telecom immunity from a bill you otherwise support. You can demand that the bill be written as you want it, and any members of your party who do not work with you will have a strike against them from the next President, and may not receive fundraising help when needed. But if you start from the premise that you’ll vote for the bill either way, then you don’t have any bargaining power. There are no consequences for failing to meet your polite requests, and it’s all over but the posturing.
There’s a hidden track at the end of the first D12 album where Eminem calls out, er, Fred Durst, over the way he backed down from Em’s side in his beef with Everlast. It’s all kind of dated, but bear with me. At the end of the track, he starts talking about if you’re scared of whitey ford, dog, just say you’re scared of whitey ford- that’s all you had to say, i wouldn’t have said shit. It’s maybe a weird analogy, but that’s how I feel about the statement Obama released on FISA. The dude is a constitutional law professor. He knows that shit is illegal. If he wants to play along with the President because he doesn’t want to blow the capital he’s got now that he’s gotten past Clinton and the Wright bullshit, then just say you don’t think it’s worth the time. But don’t pretend that the posturing is worth a damn. That’s just insulting, and it’s making those supporters who don’t want to delete the Will.I.Am song from their iPods yet look pretty fucking stupid.
The thing that frustrates me so much about it personally, though, is that it’s not even that costly a bill to oppose. Granting immunity to companies that let the Bush administration spy on their customers without warrants or oversight is not exactly tops on the voting public’s wishlist, and since he voted against previous versions of the bill, he’ll be hit with the same smears anyway. It’s not like he was voting yes on a bill that would forever mandate that Jeremiah Wright personally be allowed to abort the babies of every white veteran. It’s an issue on which a constitutional scholar is clearly on the moral high-ground. It is definitely disappointing.
But it’s okay if he’s not the ultimate Presidential dream-date. If it weren’t this that tripped you up, it’d be something else, a little further down the line. Believing so whole-heartedly in anyone- politician or otherwise- is just going to let you down. Elliott Spitzer had die-hard true-believers who thought he walked the walk; hell, for that matter, so did Hunter S Thompson. There are lots of people who can inspire you in a lot of ways, but they’re all people and they will all let you down if you expect them to be something greater. It’s way better to accept that about Obama now than years into his Presidency.
