Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story?

The Atlantic ^ | November 22 2011 | Conor Friedersdorf

[iowamark]

When I pleaded with liberals to stop ignoring President Obama's failures on civil liberties, foreign policy, and the separation of powers, treating them as if they didn't even merit a mention, the quintessential example of the troubling phenomenon hadn't yet been published. Now it has. In New York, one of America's premier magazines, Jonathan Chait, a sharp, experienced political writer, has penned a 5,000 word essay purporting to defend the president's first term. It is aimed at liberal critics who, in Chait's telling, naively expected too much.

Tellingly, as Chait writes for affluent urban liberals who railed against the Bush Administration's excesses in the War on Terrorism, he neither desires nor feels compelled to grapple with President Obama's approach to foreign policy, national security, or homeland security. The closest he comes in a piece overwhelmingly focused on domestic policy and political maneuvering is the breezy assertion that Obama "has enjoyed a string of foreign-policy successes -- expanding targeted strikes against Al Qaeda (including one that killed Osama bin Laden), ending the war in Iraq, and helping to orchestrate an apparently successful international campaign to rescue Libyan dissidents and then topple a brutal kleptocratic regime."

Isn't that something?

Apparently it isn't even worthy of mention that Obama's actions in Libya violated the War Powers Resolution, the president's own professed standards for what he can do without Congressional permission, and the legal advice provided to him by the Office of Legal Counsel.

In Chait's telling, expanded drone strikes in Pakistan are a clear success...

[iowamark]

Lefty Conor Friedersdorf confuses liberalism with socialism.

[American Constitutionalist]

" Why Do Liberals Keep Sanitizing the Obama Story? "

Because the powers that be on high in the liberal hierarchy give them their marching orders to do so until further notice ?

[x]

That's the nature of politics.

When their party is out of power ideologues condemn the government's every lapse from their own principles.

When their party is in power they excuse governments every failure to live up to those principles.

Plus, all that moralizing from a decade ago was pretty unrealistic.

What US president really would close down Guantanamo and give suspected terrorists civilian trials?

If you really thought that would happen if a Democrat was elected, wouldn't you find it hard to remember your past belief now?

[Lancey Howard]

When I pleaded with liberals to..

This author must be young. You don't waste time pleading or arguing with scum.
Ever.

"Only a fool argues with a fool." - ancient Chinese proverb

[SunkenCiv]

Because they don’t care about liberty, only their own idealogy and party label. Oh, and they are racist a-holes.

Thanks iowamark.