Obama and FISA

Voters are a contradictory bunch. They want their leaders to be principled, but at the same time they also want them to be able to solve the majority of the problems plaguing the world. However, as people know, these two wants are almost always fundamentally irreconcilable. After all, many solutions require compromise in order to get anything done, but a principled politician will rarely compromise on issues, which would otherwise make him appear to be unprincipled. And yet when forced with the most difficult decision of his Senate career, Barack Obama made the pragmatically sound decision, but the politically wrong one.

When it came time to vote on a bill to renew the passage of FISA, an important government document regulating wiretaps by the federal government, Obama voted for the bill. This was really a lose-lose situation for him. There was no way that he could have gotten out of the measure without losing standing in the political community. The bill itself did offer new regulations on the wiretapping of American citizens, but it also greatly expanded the powers of the federal government in its monitoring capabilities. Most controversially, it gave retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that had complied with illegal wiretaps for the government. Obviously such a measure was unacceptable to Obama, and he did vote for an amendment that would have stripped out immunity. However, the bill passed anyway, and Obama was one of the 62 votes in favor.

Looking at it from a political perspective, Obama should have voted against the bill. The difference between his voting for it and not voting for it in terms of the number of votes the bill had was negligible: had he voted “No”, the bill still would have been veto proof. But Obama feared being viewed as weak on national security. The problem is that no matter what he does, he will always be viewed as the weaker candidate on that issue: it is nearly impossible to beat a Republican war hero on national defense credentials.

Instead, Obama angered his base for no reason. His attempts to become a centrist are undermining the very support that won him the nomination in the first place. His only distinguishing factor between him and older politicians is the way that he has garnered support. The policies he are advocating as part of his move towards the center will lose him that difference, and lose him the election. Hopefully Obama will realize that before it’s too late.