There are some people on DailyKos who will never criticize Obama. Perhaps they want to show a united front against Republican scheming -- I understand that. Perhaps they genuinely see nothing to criticize -- a little incomprehensible to me, but every president has had his eternal fans. Perhaps they wish we could just crown Obama king and call it a day -- metaphorically.
I hope Obama wins in 2012. Believe me, I do. I will be voting for him and canvassing for him and phonebanking for him. Certainly, he is better than the alternatives (of course, a bowl of noodles would make a more effective president than Michele Bachmann.) I think he stands an excellent chance of winning in 2012. But he might not. And he won't be up for election in 2016.
This is why it is extremely important that we focus on his national security shortcomings before a new president is elected in. The next man or woman America elects may not be someone I support or believe in. And I might not want that person holding the reigns of the Patriot Act. I might not want that person authorizing strikes in various countries just because. I might not want that person deciding what to do with whistleblowers whose heinous crimes include exposing corruption and destruction in the military.
Call it the Republican Problem. We all know that Republicans are now opposing various White House actions that they fully condoned when Bush was president. And yes, they're filthy hypocrites. It's too bad they didn't have the foresight to see that when they gave Bush the freedom to enact whatever brainfart was bursting in the empty cavern of his cranium, they were also giving a Democratic president the same powers.
Some of us on the left (or the middle, as the case seems to be with a lot of these folks) are making the same damn mistake. I don't need a crystal ball to see that this can only end in tears, and no one else should either. If you are the kind of person who is always 100% behind Obama, no matter what -- picture Michele Bachmann's face in the White House instead. Or Rick Santorum. Or Rick Perry.
If you're not concerned about your own rights now, at least be concerned for your rights in the future under a Republican president. At the very least, start planning your backtracking now. This is, after all, the age of the internet. Everything you write exists for posterity. Will you be back here in 2017 trying to figure out a way to justify your silence in 2012? What about our lawmakers -- how many of them will be twisting through the same intellectual contortions? Obama is not king. There will be other presidents after him.