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Keith Olberman on Daily Kos, Obama & the FISA bill
Keith came in for some harsh words on Daily Kos about his comments on Obama's handling of the FISA bill. He makes a couple good points in his response. He opens with an insightful anecdote about John Dean to underscore Dean's pre-eminence as an interpreter of legal matters. Then he moves onto the core of his reasoning for support of Obama's approach to the FISA bill.
With that preamble out of the way, here goes. John said his reading of the revised FISA statute suggested it was so poorly constructed (or maybe so sublimely constructed) that it clearly did not preclude future criminal prosecution of the telecoms - it only stopped civil suits.
I have repeated his observation each night since. Maybe I didn't sell my conviction of its conclusiveness. I think John Dean is worth 25 Glenn Greenwalds (maybe 26 Keith Olbermanns).
Thus, as I phrased it on the air tonight, obviously Obama kicked the left in the teeth by supporting the bill. But anybody who got as hot about this as I did would prefer to see a President Obama prosecuting the telecoms criminally, instead of seeing a Senator Obama engender more "soft on terror" crap by casting a token vote in favor of civil litigation that isn't going to pass since so many other Democrats caved anyway.
I think his last sentence is his strongest point. I've seen this in reaction to issues that Senator Kerry is deeply involved in. People forget that passing laws isn't a 'one-time and you're done' kind of effort. It is always a repetitive process of moving the ball a little further down the field until you finally make the touchdown. I've seen a list of famous legislation and how many times each bill was submitted to Congress before it was finally passed into law. I wish I'd bookmarked it because it makes this point beautifully.
Sen. Reid has come in for his share of denigration on Daily Kos as well but if anyone believes that Harry Reid wasn't deeply involved in the delay of the vote on the FISA bill, they're fooling themselves. Senators Reid, Feingold, Dodd, Leahy, Kerry and Obama all have their roles to play in managing this bill so that they preserve the Constitution of the United States and at the same time, balance the need to provide as little political ammunition to their opposition in light of the fall election.
In truth, we need both kinds of activists, the pragmatists and the purity trolls, to support our Constitution and those who uphold and protect it. The latter are needed to place the goalposts and the former are needed to move the ball down the field and through the uprights. Sen. Feingold could not have done what he did without the support of the liberal blogosphere, the libertarians and the group of people who came together in the Strange Bedfellows group. Sen. Reid could not have done what he did in delaying the bill without Sen. Feingold and other senators standing up to say the bill was unacceptable. They are also well aware of the need to increase the number of Democratic senators this fall and I suspect they do have a plan and strategy for accomplishing both the passage of an acceptable FISA bill and the election of a Democratic President and majority in the Senate and the House as well as down-ticket Dems.
Markos brought some sense of perspective to it in this comment on Huffpo:
"We'll see what he does this week," said Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos. "If he's part of the capitulation or refuses to lead, then it's salient for your story. As of now, I think it's still too early to write this piece."
I would add that the one week timeframe is a little short and that Obama's leadership may not be immediately evident to all and sundry in the netroots. His leadership may remain behind closed doors in the Senate so that others take the heat for toeing the line with the left-wing while he focuses on what he needs to focus on ... winning the election in November.
This battle isn't done. In the meantime, let's not wound our own warriors.
