Obama pulls a trigger -- and takes two hostages

After the deal that become the Budget Control Act was announced on July 31, I repeatedly voiced the fear that Obama would go wobbly on the $600 billion in defense cuts that would allegedly be triggered if the supercommittee failed:

My fear is that Obama will once again turn the trigger on himself -- in this case, the large (if back-loaded and ultimately unenforceable) defense cuts that go into effect automatically if the supercommittee can't agree on a package. Would any president really suffer the defense budget to be cut by fiat, even notionally?  Not this president, I fear.  Look again at his rationale for not squeezing another trigger last December -- the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts:

And the reason is because this is a very unique circumstance. This is a situation in which tens of millions of people would be directly damaged and immediately damaged, and at a time when the economy is just about to recover.

A mandated $750 billion reduction in projected defense spending over ten years is also "a unique circumstance." I can just hear it: "I cannot allow the security of the United States to be compromised..."

Wrong!  While Panetta forms a contrapuntal-but-harmonious* chorus warning that the "sequestered" cuts would "tear a seam in the nation's defense," Obama has declared that he's perfectly ready to let those cuts go forward if Congress does not replace the automatic cuts with a "balanced" plan for equivalent or greater reduction. That's a two-fer: he is trying to make Republicans feel the brunt of the pressure to avoid a) the sequestered defense cuts and b) the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts. Now his own counterproposal comes into play: $1.5 trillion in new revenue combined with a very different package of cuts, including to Medicare. That, incidentally, should put paid to the "lack of leadership" charges: he has set the parameters, and can afford to wait until the GOP begins to approach them.  He has exposed the Nov. 23 deadline as an illusion; the only deadlines that matter are November 6, 2012, and December 31, 2012.

That sick "Obama's sliding" feeling

Bitterly disappointed as I was in Obama for letting himself be hijacked in the debt ceiling deal, I have been willing to reserve judgment through the next round -- the supercommittee negotiations -- and possibly through the endgame of the Bush tax cut expirations.  But this from Obama today triggered that "there he goes again" reflex:

Last week, we reached an agreement that will make historic cuts to defense and domestic spending.  But there’s not much further we can cut in either of those categories.  What we need to do now is combine those spending cuts with two additional steps:  tax reform that will ask those who can afford it to pay their fair share and modest adjustments to health care programs like Medicare (my emphasis).

Couple that with this warning from Panetta:

The politics of pique, redux

Do Republicans threatening to spike New START because their DADT stonewall broke down perchance remember how Newt Gingrich's confession-cum-boast that he was moved to shut down the government in part because he found himself seated at the back of Air Force One played out?

WASHINGTON (CNN) [Nov. 16, 1995] -- As the government budget standoff continued Thursday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich indicated the Republican hard line was due, in part, to a "snub" from President Clinton during their recent trip to Israel for the funeral of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. White House Chief of Staff

Leon Panetta called the Gingrich comment "bizarre."

John Brennan, whipping boy

A little object lesson from Andrew Sullivan in how righteous indignation can overshoot:

"Holy hell has broken loose over this," is how one of Mike Isikoff's sources has described John Brennan's attempt to prevent release of three damning OLC memos drafted by the Bush administration in its systematic program for torturing terror suspects. One begins to realize how deeply important it was that Brennan didn't get the top CIA job.You see now his attachment to the torture regime he pretended to oppose and his fierce loyalty to CIA officers who may have committed war crimes and now seek to prevent the American people from finding out what was done in secret, against the law, in their name (my emphasis).

Brennan may indeed be acting out of "fierce loyalty" and still have opposed some, perhaps most or all, of the Bush Administration's worst crimes. Life is messy. He may have opposed some, stopped others, acquiesced in others, had no role in others.

Moreover, Andrew neglects to mention not only Brennan's reputed argument against releasing the memos -- "that release of the memos could embarrass foreign intelligence services who cooperated with the CIA" -- but also Isikoff's report that Brennan has won over anti-torture champion Leon Panetta, the CIA director, to his point of view.

I think that the memos have to be released (are redactions protecting cooperating countries feasible?) The crimes of the last Administration are like toxic assets on the national blaance sheet; the U.S. won't be fully "ready to lead again," as Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address, until it's all out and dealt with. But the (alleged) fact that Brennan could convince Panetta and stall the process is a reminder how easy it is for those of us on the outside looking in to fail to imagine how inside knowledge might bring people of good will with decision-making power to conclusions different from their (our) own.