Too much like Bush: The fall of Greg Craig and the rise of Rahm Emanuel's Obama

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yesterday, quoting Andrew Sullivan, I noted that I remain bullish on Obama -- though I also noted my own rather significant reservations.

Well, those reservations deepened when I read Time's excellent piece on the fall of Greg Craig, Obama's ex-counsel. Craig, a Clintonite turned Obama advisor, was the man tasked with undoing the dark side of Bush's war on terror, including torture and Gitmo. At first, he and Obama were pretty much on the same side. In time, with partisan politics trumping principle, Obama moved away from some of the commitments he made during the campaign and sided increasingly with Rahm Emanuel and his political, as opposed to legal, advisors. Here's a key passage:

Obama needed to regain control quickly, and he started by jettisoning liberal positions he had been prepared to accept — and had even okayed — just weeks earlier. First to go was the release of the pictures of detainee abuse. Days later, Obama sided against Craig again, ending the suspension of Bush's extrajudicial military commissions. The following week, Obama pre-empted an ongoing debate among his national-security team and embraced one of the most controversial of Bush's positions: the holding of detainees without charges or trial, something he had promised during the campaign to reject.

Yes, Obama has accomplished a great deal, including putting a stop to "enhanced" interrogation and closing the secret CIA prisons, but, on other key matters, he has turned on the old Obama, the Obama of last year's campaign, and embraced Bush and Cheney.

Yes, I'm still bullish, even now. I still think he can do great and transformative things as president, that he can still be the progressive yet pragmatic president I and so many others hoped he would be, and I credit him for being so politically astute. But it's hard to be optimistic when a good, decent, and principled man like Craig is basically sent packing and when Obama seems to be moving further and further away from the man who was elected with hope and the promise of change.