The more I watch the evolution of Barack Obama, the more I like the guy.
Honestly, he's sounding truly conservative these days. It's awesome.
Now he's talking about running down the deficit and creating jobs through incentives for small businesses. He's sounding a lot like George W. Bush. I love it.
Remember how mad he was about all those bonuses paid out by those Wall Street firms after the bailout?
Well, now he's sounding like Captain Capitalist, telling Bloomberg he doesn't "begrudge" the $17 million bonus given to JPMorgan Chase & Co. exec Jamie Dimon or the $9 million doled out to Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein.
Cool, glad to hear it.
President Obama doesn't want his administration to seem anti-business.
But at the same time, he wants to be the champion of populist anger over the perception that Wall Street tycoons are cleaning up at the expense of taxpayers after the bailout.
That will be an interesting tightrope to watch him walk going forward.
Vice President Joe Biden was on Larry King the other night. That was a fascinating interview.
Biden: "I am very optimistic about - about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government."
Iraq? Great achievement of the Obama administration?
Some of you may recall then-Sen. Biden's plan to surrender to the war lords and split up the country into three chunks.
And here's what Obama - who was always against the war - had to say in 2007:
"I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact I think it will do the reverse. I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. So I am going to actively oppose the President's proposal. I don't doubt his sincerity when he says that he thinks this is the best approach, but I think he is wrong and I think the American people think he is wrong."
Now Iraq is his greatest achievement.
Weird.
(To be fair, I must admit that I was never a big fan of Bush's Iraq war policies either.)
But where President Obama is really coming around to my way of thinking has to do with anti-terror policy.
Frankly, seems like the Obama administration is going all Dick Cheney on us.
The White House has backtracked repeatedly.
The administration is ready to throw Attorney General Eric Holder under the bus because he keeps talking about his responsibility to uphold the law.
Holder wants to prosecute the Bush-era lawyers who approved harsh interrogation methods used on terror suspects like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Cheney said this was a bad idea.
The administration, apparently feeling the political fallout from such a move, is telling Holder to back off. Seems the administration doesn't want to "look backward" on the issue.
The administration also changed policy with regard to interrogations, saying that the responsibility for questioning detainees would no longer be with the CIA. The FBI's High Value Detainee Interrogation Group would do the job.
Cheney said this was a bad idea.
The new policy spelled out that the FBI could only used non-coercive methods from the Army Field manual.
Before you know it, a terrorist tries to blow up a plane making its approach to Detroit. The administration's new terror interrogation policy wasn't quite up to speed yet.
Holder labels the guy a criminal defendant and the terrorist was questioned for about 50 minutes before being advised of his right to remain silent. Guess what he did then? Remained silent.
But later, Holder backtracked, telling Congress that the terrorist was turned over to the FBI for more questioning and did produce valuable intelligence.
Then there was the idea of trying KSM - mastermind of the 9/11 attacks - in New York near the site of the attacks.
Cheney said this was a bad idea.
Initially, the administration was confident that this was the right thing to do - a civilian criminal trial instead of a military tribunal to showcase the American justice system to the world.
But then New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Chuck Schumer urged the administration to find another venue. The very same day, the administration ordered the trial moved out of New York City. Since then, Schumer has said the trial shouldn't be held anywhere in the state of New York. And now there is bipartisan swell in Congress to block funding for a civilian trial anywhere on US soil.
The cost and logistics for something like that would be staggering.
And what if the KSM got off on a technicality? It's not beyond the realm of probability that interrogation techniques used on KSM could contaminate evidence. Then what?
So it looks now like KSM and others like him may wind up being tried by military tribunals in Guantanamo, which is precisely what Cheney has been suggesting all along.And speaking of Gitmo, President Obama doesn't even talk about it anymore. Remember when he made a big deal of closing it? He signed an executive order closing it.
Cheney said this was a bad idea.
President Obama has missed every Gitmo closing deadline he's ever set for himself and he probably can't get Congress to approve the funding necessary to close the place anyway.
Bottom line in all this is that it was easy for Obama and the Dems to fire barbs at Cheney when they weren't running the show. They could snuggle up nice and cozy with their left-wing base and say anything they wanted.
But when you're in charge, you've got a lot more to lose. You have to listen to everybody, not just the people who agree with you.
Then along comes somebody like newly elected Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown. He said during his shockingly successful campaign that terrorists don't deserve the protections afforded the rest of us under the US constitution. The guy even goes on record as supporting waterboarding. He won on that platform in one of the most Democratic states in the nation.
When it comes to anti-terror policy, President Obama and the Democrats have come to realize the vast majority of Americans prefer the Bush/Cheney method.
And - albeit in fits and starts - they're adopting it.
