The most curious was the announcement that his administration’s slavish adherence to Bush-era doctrine on state secrets, roundly blasted by Glenn Greenwald at slate.com, could be reexamined. Obama admitted that they hadn’t taken time to review the issue upon entering office, which suggests that they were taken aback by the ferociously negative reaction to his Bush-ite assertion of blanket presidential privilege.
This welcome backpedaling could be particularly significant as it shows that Obama’s instinct for papering over ‘controversy’ is more pragmatic than ideological and that he’s open to challenge on matters of principle. That’s a relief. For the record, torture, arbitrary executive power, illegal wiretapping and vastly expanded police powers are not mere ‘controversies’ that we can resolve over lunch; they are burning issues of democratic life that a lot of people are determined to defend against Bush, Cheney and, yes, Obama himself if need be. The president also was rhetorically generous on the issue of immigration reform, avoiding the inflammatory ‘illegal aliens’ phrase and focusing on immigrants as working people rather than criminals. What a breath of fresh air. We can now hope it will be translated into some sober thinking and talking about the issue so that public discourse can be recaptured from the screaming demagogues and race-baiting nativists. The Republican obstructionists will have a collective coronary over it, as they should, which could nicely illustrate how their tub-thumping nastiness on immigration is exactly of a piece with their defense of white, male, rich-guy privilege on every other issue.
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