James B. Comey, Jr. was Deputy Attorney General under President George W. Bush. As second in command to John Ashcroft, Comey ran the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department.
During the March 2004 hospitalization of Attorney General Ashcroft, Comey refused to "certify" the legality of central aspects of the NSA domestic wiretapping program. The certification was required under existing White House procedures to continue the program. Comey's refusal prompted the hospital bed visit of White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez to ask Ashcroft to overrule Comey. "Transcript: Senate Judiciary Hearing Senate Hearing on U.S. Attorney Firings (Transcript, Part 1 of 5)" Comey threatened to resign. In a personal meeting with President Bush, Comey extracted Bush's agreement to changes in the program. Comey did resign in 2005.
After his resignation Comey, in a series of speeches, revealed that he was deeply troubled by the "certainty" with which Bush administration officials approached problems. At a William & Mary "Charter Day" address in 2008, Comey said
A healthy recognition of the limits of our ability to understand facts, and to reason from them to good decisions, is a strength.
But too often in my experience - especially at the top of government - that recognition is derided as a weakness, as "not being solid," or as "squishiness," or "lack of conviction." Comey's Charter Day Remarks
Liberals, including especially those at Daily Kos, spent eight long years agonizing over the certainty of the right.
Certain that homosexuality is a choice
Certain that human life begins at conception
Certain that abortion is murder
Certain that American democracy is the best form of government for all
Certain that tax cuts solve all economic problems
Certain that regulation is evil and government is the problem
Certain that the free market solves all problems
Certain that European or Canadian style health care has failed
Certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
And on and on. The certainty of those on the right made serious dialogue impossible and made good decision making difficult.
On January 20, 2009 that changed. The United States has a President who believes good decisions come from listening to all perspectives. A President who understands that certainty is wrong, no matter what side of the political spectrum practices it.
President Obama's favorite theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, famously posited that
If you and I disagree, then at least one of us is wrong, and it may be me.
That's known to historians and political scientists as "Niebuhrian humility."
And Niebuhrian humility is true liberalism.
We are very fortunate to be led by a President with Niebuhrian humility. Conservatives may see humility as "apologizing for America," or as lack of conviction in American exceptionalism, but humility is what, ultimately, saves us.
The myth of certainty (and the absence of humility) plagues liberals as well. We are seeing it in strong doses here at Daily Kos, and elsewhere in the liberal blogs. We are certain we are right and the President's openness to other approaches and other ideas is seen as a betrayal.
A survey of Daily Kos dairies finds a plague of certainty. The President's failure to be as certain as we is "not change we can believe in," commenters say with regularity.
We liberals need a huge dose of Niebuhrian humility. The process of governing is exceptionally important. (Gene McCarthy used to say that the process was more important than the result; whether you believe that or not, the point is that without a process that recognizes the possiblity that our side is wrong, no good result is likely). Enacting or enforcing a list of liberal agenda items without counter argument would not be change we can believe in, it would be an exercise in unfounded, prideful, certainty.
As Obama said during the election campaign
Liberal objectives like withdrawing from Iraq, stopping AIDS and working more closely with our allies are laudable, "but they hardly constitute a coherent national security policy." Obama, Gospel and Verse
Let's celebrate that we have an administration deeply rooted not in naive liberalism or doctrinaire conservatism, but in an open-minded, rational, realistic approach to governance. That's true liberalism, and that's change we can believe in.