Don't Sign It

Dafna Linzer reports that the Obama administration is considering a signing statement for the '11 defense authorization to protest its restrictions on prosecutions or releases of GTMO detainees. Adam Serwer has mixed feelings, and comments:

There's a pretty clear ethical dilemma here for liberals. One signing statement doesn't turn Obama into Bush, who literally did this hundreds of times, but at this point closing Gitmo will require Obama asserting the kind of broad executive authority they found outrageous during the last administration.

Doesn't seem like such a dilemma. For the statement to actually mean anything, Obama would have to commit to defying an act of Congress he intends to sign -- which is to say, break the law. There's no dilemma there: that's straightforwardly something to oppose. And since the proposed signing statement won't go that far, according to Dafna ("While the signing statement and the executive order would leave some room for Obama, they would do little to bring his policy goals to fruition"), putting it out is pointless. It would be quite the mortgaging of principles to go the signing-statement route and get nothing in return. As Marcy Wheeler -- my old FDL pal, whom I already miss terribly -- writes:

[T]his plan–to use a signing statement to demand prosecutorial independence–amounts to Obama stating that only he (well, and his former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel), not Congress, gets to interfere politically with prosecutorial decision-making.

The bottom line here is that Obama lost an argument about Guantanamo Bay. He's on his way to losing a more extensive argument about civilian trials. Neither has to stay lost. But the right venue for picking that fight is in public, in Congress, in the open.

Comments

[Mad Dogs]

As I said over at EW's post:

"My reading of this anonymous quote also reflects that this thinking comes from the “political” side of the White House as opposed to the “legal” sides from either the DOJ, State, DOD, or even the White House Counsel’s Office.

My take is that this reflects the Obama 2012 Campaign crew (Axelrod, Gibbs, Jarret, etc.) and their take on polling. They will only choose to fight for things when the polls go their way.

Indefinite Detention polls well. Or put another way, fighting for trials, even Military Commission trials, does not poll well.

Now many (at FDL and elsewhere) would ask: How can that be? How can Indefinite Detention poll well? It is an anathema to Progressives!

The answer is in the eyes of the poll readers. The Obama 2012 Campaign crew is not interested in whether something polls well with Progressives.

Even if something polls well with 51% of the public, that is not granular enough for the Obama 2012 Campaign crew.

Instead, the Obama 2012 Campaign crew is interested in whether something polls well with their chosen target audience. And that target audience is not Progressives, but instead Independents and, disappearing though they may be, Moderate Republicans.

And Indefinite Detention pleases Independents and Republicans.

The Obama 2012 Campaign crew has chosen to assume the 2012 election votes of Democrats (including Progressives), and to target the Obama 2012 campaign efforts at the margins.

Therefore it is likely that we will see little or no energy spent on fighting for Progressive issues for the next 2 years, but instead see the Obama 2012 Campaign crew acquiesce in supporting Independent and “relatively” Moderate Republican issues.

The Obama 2012 Campaign crew will “fight” only for those things over the next 2 years that reward them according to their granular reading of the polls."

[bmaz]

The remedy was veto; but he had not the balls for that. This is just weak tea for a soul forgot.

[Alex]

It could make sense: Guantanamo wasn't created by act of Congress but by an assertion of unitary executive power.

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