Good profile of Glenn Greenwald
Eric Boehlert has a good profile of Greenwald in Salon today, excerpted from his book. Worth reading.
It also reminds us of Obama’s 180-degree reversal on the FISA destruction and telecom immunity. While campaigning he pledged to oppose the bill and even to filibuster it. We quickly learned the worth of his pledge: he totally reversed himself. (As he did, again, on the court-ordered release of additional torture photos.) Obama is doing many good things, but he clearly cannot be depended on uncritically and he clearly believes that the powerful can in some cases break the law with impunity.
From Boehlert’s article:
When Greenwald, who had blogged 300 to 400 items about the larger issue of Bush wiretapping during a 30-month span, opened his email on June 20 to read Obama’s much anticipated statement regarding wiretapping and retroactive immunity, his expectations were low. Yes, Obama had been a forceful FISA ally during the primaries. But just looking at the politics in play, Greenwald thought it unlikely that as the Party’s nominee Obama would now break on FISA with Democrats in the House and Senate. Greenwald suspected there had been some sort of behind-the-scenes signal that Obama would be okay if Democrats gave Bush what he wanted in terms of wiretapping and retroactive immunity, and that Obama would not bitterly oppose it. In fact, he might even quietly support the policy initiative.
Still, Greenwald, who remained agnostic during the Clinton-Obama primary battle, was startled when he clicked on the email and read Obama’s statement. In it, the candidate not only walked away from his previous statements denouncing wiretapping as well as from his commitment to thwart retroactive immunity, but he actually embraced specific Republican talking points when discussing the national security issue of electronic surveillance. "Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people," Obama announced.
Furious, Greenwald tore off the gloves and excoriated Obama in a way no neutral, big-name blogger had done during the entire campaign:
What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He’s supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution. What’s more, as a Constitutional Law Professor, he knows full well what a radical perversion of our Constitution this bill is, and yet he’s supporting it anyway. Anyone who sugarcoats or justifies that is doing a real disservice to their claimed political values and to the truth.
Greenwald wasn’t looking to proclaim Obama unfit to be the Party’s nominee. But as he searched around the blogosphere looking for some early signs of life from a community that had just been dissed by the most famous Democrat in America, he found mostly silence. Rather than straight talk in response to Obama’s FISA proclamation, Greenwald saw creeping timidity, with portions of the blogosphere expressing concern that openly criticizing Obama’s FISA stance might damage the Democrat’s chance for a White House win.
For Greenwald, that was too much. Partisan cheerleading was not why the liberal blogosphere was created. There were already plenty of Beltway institutions that would applaud Democratic politicians no matter what they did. The netroots, he thought, ought to oppose Democratic complicity and capitulation just as forcefully as the netroots battled GOP corruption and media malfeasance. All three were of equal importance; none of them should be discarded for the sake of a campaign.
