Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Obama

Obama’s besetting political fault is his automatic adoption of the tone of command, accompanied by a persistent reluctance to be seen as the source of the policy he commandeers.

Obama acted on the assumption that the establishment is one and irreplaceable, and must be served in roughly its present form. This assumption he seems to have acquired between the summer of 2008 – the time of his capitulation on domestic surveillance and his Aipac speech affirming support for Israel – and the National Archives Speech on security a year later. The trajectory was completed by the sacking last November of Greg Craig as White House counsel: Craig was the lawyer who drafted Obama’s original plan for the closing of Guantánamo.

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