Take for instance the issue of military tribunals. On the campaign trail last year, Obama denounced Bush’s effort to try suspected terrorists using military courts, calling them an “enormous failure.” The new president suspended them after taking office, only to resurrect the tribunals in recent weeks. His claim that the new tribunals will be more defense-friendly by allowing detainees more leeway in choosing their own counsel is “laughable,” argues Krauthammer. Like other facets of his national security plan, Obama follows a predictable three-point plan: “(a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.”

 

Obama has embraced Bush’s policies because of the realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, which has no room for the “fanciful world of the opposition politician” who, upon finding himself in charge, is faced with “a rather narrow range of acceptable alternatives” to keeping the country safe. This isn’t a bad thing, Krauthammer insists, for that is “the genius of democracy … When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.”

 

This means that Bush won’t have to wait for historians to determine the value of his war on terrorism because Obama is already “doing it day by day.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Obama in Bush Clothing (by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post)