Tethered Swimming

Matt Taibbi had an interesting post up this week.  He was puzzling over just why Barack Obama (freshly inaugurated, insanely popular, Savior of the People Barack Obama) has so publicly embraced these goofy tribunals and odious concepts like indefinite detention.  Taibbi is a sharp and cynical political observer, but this has him confused to the point of throwing his hands up:

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t get what Obama is doing here. He could have closed Gitmo, created some sort of tribunal system for the current inmates, and then stood up on a pedestal and announced that the United States is no longer a country that detains people without due process. And as soon as he finished that speech he could have gone on doing what presidents have done for decades before Bush, finding the soft spots in international criminal/military law to basically arrest and detain anyone whom they considered a genuinely dangerous suspect. But what he’s done instead of that, seemingly, is specifically endorse preventive detention. He apparently is anxious for people to know that that is in fact what he stands for.

Which to me is just… weird. I don’t get it. What does he gain from making this move? I know what we lose, but what does he gain? Votes in Alabama three years from now? Is that really what this is all about?

This is essentially the same reaction I had to Obama’s FISA problem last July.  He’s very publicly embracing ideas that are antithetical to longstanding Constitutional principles in exchange for a short term political benefit that’s so tiny it may not even exist.  As Taibbi points out, this isn’t like the financial mess.  In that case it makes sense that a new president, dealing with a complex subject on which he is not an expert, could be pressured by advisors into being overly generous with ghoulish bankers.  But the Guantanamo mess and everything that goes with it are issues of Constitutional law, a subject that Obama knows back to front.

The chances that Obama has multiple personalities and one part of him simply doesn’t know what the other part is doing are vanishingly small, so his decisions on prisoners and tribunals have to make sense to him in some larger context.  In an effort to figure out what that context is, to try and see this from Obama’s perspective, I conducted a thought experiment: what is the most craven and cynical thing I can plausibly devise for Obama’s true motives?  (The keyword there is “plausibly”, no matter what you may read on the dark corners of the internet Obama is not a fascist, a communist, or a space alien.)  The short answer I came to is “health care”.  The long answer is below.  Here goes:

The most undernoted aspect of Obama is his political skill.  Oh sure every once and a while someone will refer to him as coming from the “Chicago machine” or some such, but it’s usually some right wing crank who’s seen The Untouchables too many times and thinks fedoras are still in style.  But Obama really did come from a brutal political culture, as Ryan Lizza detailed in The New Yorker last summer.  This experience included direct participation in nakedly gerrymandering Illinois after the 2000 census.  This gives us a first postulate from which to work: Obama cares deeply about Democrats winning elections and fucking over the Republican Party.  Blue success at the polls isn’t a paramount goal for Obama as much as it is an omnipresent concern, something which must at least be considered in every other decision.

The second thing we can say for sure is that Obama, and his closest advisors, understand the political lay of the land in this country better than anyone right now.  He spent two years barnstorming the country and when he wasn’t giving speeches or talking with voters he was studying issues and looking at enough poll numbers to make an ordinary person’s eyeballs melt and pour back into his skull.  That doesn’t mean they can’t misjudge an issue here or there, but it does mean that their overall take on things should be treated with a lot of respect.

Third, for all his high minded rhetoric and genial nature Obama knows that the bungling of Bush the Younger has given him a tremendous opportunity, the kind that doesn’t come along too often.  The last time the Reds were this discredited and in this much disarray was the mid-1960s.  Before that it was the 1930s.  Introspective as he his, Obama has probably allowed himself some pretty grandiose thoughts.  Johnson pushed through Civil Rights and Medicare, arguably the two greatest achievements of the post-war federal government.  Roosevelt brought the federal government into the modern age and erected an idea of government as a positive force which has withstood nearly eight decades of conservative assault.  Those men changed this country for the better and even after all these years majorities of Americans look on their works as good things.  They are giants and Obama has a chance to take his place amongst them.  He and his brain trust are thinking in those kinds of terms and on those kinds of time scales.

That brings us to health care reform; it is the key to Obama’s agenda.  Successful health care reform, defined as the twin goals of covering everyone while not disrupting the lives of people who already have coverage, paves the way to everything else.  Not only does it look good from policy and historical perspectives, but it also has tangible and immediate political benefits.  Think of the millions of voters out there who don’t have health insurance.  What’s more important to them, addressing climate change (which will take decades) or being able to go to a doctor next time they or someone they love gets sick?  It seems almost laughable to say, but there’s a very good chance that by this time next year every single American will have some kind of medical coverage.

And so we come to the next important item on Obama’s agenda: November 2010, a mere seventeen months from now.  Successful health care reform would make the election vastly easier on the Blues.  Anyone with a D next to their name is going to proclaim, often and loud, that their team got the health care system fixed.  That means more Blue Senators and Representatives, which will be nice for Obama, but it also means big things below the federal level.

Obama is very cognizant of the power of redistricting, he’s been in the secret room in Springfield and he’s helped draw the maps.  Winning elections in years that end in zero can tilt the playing field in your favor for the rest of the decade.  It doesn’t guarantee anything, but it means a few more House seats and friendlier state legislatures and makes everything a little bit easier.  Remember, Obama is thinking big and the easier things are on the Democrats the more he can get done while in office.  He’s not just trying to win an election, he’s trying to create a self reinforcing system.

That doesn’t mean he’s trying to create a one party state, but it doesn’t mean he’s trying to shift the country to the left in a permanent way on some issues.  Opposing him is what’s left of the Republican Party and it’s true that the Reds have a lot of problems right now.  These range from unfortunate demographic trends (proportionally less white people) to simple matters of political organization (plummeting party ID numbers) to the fact that it is currently being led by catty buffoons (Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh) and disgraced has beens (Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney).  Despite all that, they aren’t dead yet.

In fact, there is still one area where the Reds hold an advantage over the Blues and it falls under the heading of “national security”.  Any doubt of that was erased by all the mileage conservative wackaloons have gotten out of the ludicrous idea that Obama wants to drop off Gitmo guys in Kansas City with panel vans, Kalashnikovs and your child’s after school schedule.  Those attacks have been so successful that only half of Americans even want that fucking place closed.  Terrorism and national security remain weak spots for the Blues and a major catastrophe in that area could unmake all of the progress of the last two and a half years.

The alternative is almost too ghastly to contemplate.  If Obama goes down like Carter, as a nice liberal who couldn’t handle the big chair, it would mean a return to the bad old days of Bush the Younger and worse.  It would mean the hard core of the Republican Party gaining control over the federal government again, only this time with an enormous sense of vindication and the world even closer to an environmental apocalypse.  It would mean an America that’s a militant supply side nightmare, with walled cities protected by private guards and draconian punishments for anyone who steps out of line.

That is what’s riding on Obama’s shoulders and it is a fearsome burden.  With that much responsibility they’re loathe to take any chances.  Indefinite detention of suspicious men so stateless that their own governments don’t even want them back is a very small political risk to take.  These men, villains all in the public imagination, have no constituency.  And then, of course, there are the many spies and generals Obama has, at least some of whom are no doubt warning him in emphatic terms that abandoning this or that tactic (or releasing this man or that) is downright irresponsible.

From that perspective publicly embracing indefinite detention makes a lot more sense.  It’s black belt level politics on a national scale, divide and conquer.  Destroy the Republicans by cleaving off their moderates and letting the rest of the party shatter against its own stupidity and ignorance.  Assure party loyalty on your side by balancing between the moderates and the liberals, tough-on-terrorists in exchange for public-option-health-care, more-troops-in-Afghanistan for talks-with-Castro/Assad/Khamenei.

So when Taibbi asks if it really is all about votes then the answer is yes, it is.  But it’s not just about votes three years from now, it’s about votes one year from now, and five years from now and deep into the next decade.  Health care reform can cement the Democratic majority, it must not be risked.  The Republicans are wounded but they’re not dead, they must be treated with the utmost caution.  Civil liberties?  Due process for terrorists?  Legacy burnishing policy changes like that are what second terms are for.