THE SOFT BIGOTRY OF LOW EXPECTATIONS:

Legal left cools toward Obama (JOSH GERSTEIN, 4/13/09, Politico)

It’s not just Paul Krugman anymore.

A growing chorus on the legal left is cooling toward President Barack Obama as a result of recent actions by the Justice Department vigorously defending the Bush administration in what it termed the war on terror.

“Obama Position on Illegal Spying: Worse Than Bush,” a large graphic declared over the weekend on the home page of a respected group advocating freedom on the Internet, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Obama has been pilloried by a liberal TV icon who was one of President George W. Bush’s most vociferous critics, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

Obama is Dubya's acceptable face (Greg Sheridan, April 11, 2009, The Australian)

[T]he fact Obama has a double standard working in his favour is a great benefit for those who appreciate the importance of US leadership in the world. So I should rejoice in the double standard and hope it continues for the eight years Obama is likely to be President.

After all, on all the big foreign policy questions, Obama has continued Bush's policies. The predator drones still fly over Pakistan, destroying any al-Qa'ida operative dumb enough to talk on the phone. The terrorists are still in Guantanamo as Obama's administration develops the Bush administration's decision to shut Guantanamo, as a necessity of global PR, while trying to stop the terrorists from going back to killing civilians. Like Bush, Obama is pursuing an attempt to engage the Iranian regime and even using the same official Bush did. He is withdrawing from Iraq very slowly, on a timetable approved by Republican senator John McCain. He acknowledges the success of the US troop surge in Iraq and wants to emulate it in Afghanistan. He stands four square behind Israel's security. And so on.

Yet while much of the world hated Bush with an irrational passion, allegedly for these policies, it loves Obama with at least a seemingly similar passion, notwithstanding these very same policies. This is a bit of a mystery, but so far at least it's a good mystery.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 13, 2009 6:21 PM