[grandalf]

The headline might as well be a more Onionesque "After gaining power, politician turns out not to actually hold the strongly principled views he expressed while campaigning".

I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign. A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of power holders agree that aggressive spying is a good idea. This is closely related to their strong preference for maintaining the status quo across the board. We should not be surprised that Obama did not reverse any of Bush's controversial decisions because they were not actually controversial among those with power or with the potential to gain power.

Generally speaking, when an issue is touted as being highly controversial between the major parties, it consists of 98% solid agreement and 2% hyped up disagreement. The disagreement and the "fray" are part of the choreographed propaganda undertaken by powerful interests to create the illusion of dissent.

[downandout]

I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign. A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power.

Usually we at least get to learn about candidates' fundamental views before electing them. A pro-life candidate, for example, isn't suddenly going to change that view after taking office. Even the much-maligned George Bush generally acted in keeping with the fundamental beliefs that he told the country he held prior to his election.

This is what is so disturbing about Obama and his supporters. He told them bald faced lies about his fundamental views, and is fairly unapologetic about it. Even worse, the vast majority of his supporters are OK with that. They have shown politicians that lying to us is fine as long as the lies are delivered with enough polish. That paves the way for even more egregious activities going forward.

[alexeisadeski3]

>Even the much-maligned George Bush generally acted in keeping with the fundamental beliefs that he told the country he held prior to his election.

Bush promised a humble foreign policy with no nation building. He had criticized the Clinton-Gore Administration for being too interventionist: "If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road. And I'm going to prevent that."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush_presidential_cam...

[downandout]

This statement was made pre-9/11 - an event that changed many things. But even this wasn't a dramatic shift in his views. If anything, Bush's reaction to 9/11 reinforced the image he presented prior to his election. Whether you agreed with his views or not, few would argue that his reaction came entirely out of left field.

By contrast, this NSA/Obama issue proves that we simply don't know the person that is sitting in the White House right now. We only know that he lied through his teeth to get there.

[subsection1h]

> This statement was made pre-9/11 - an event that changed many things.

Bush surrounded himself with PNAC members before 9/11. All that 9/11 did was give them the opportunity to initiate regime change in Iraq, which they had been calling for ever since PNAC was first formed. Yet he promised "no nation building" while campaigning.

I don't see much difference between Bush and Obama's level of honesty.

[MattGrommes]

Imagine a presidential candidate making promises and saying a lot of things that he believed in about spying and how the agencies involved should work. Then he gets into office and finds out that things are much worse than he could have possibly known before getting into office. Would you prefer he keep to the path he laid out in campaigning or deal with reality as it is, even if it goes against his beliefs? I try to be smarter today than I was yesterday, I hope somebody in such a position of power would do the same.

Note that I have no idea if this is anywhere near true and I don't believe in what Obama and the various agencies have done but I do believe something like this is closer to the truth than some grand scheme by Obama to lie himself into power.

[downandout]

Naivete is an arguable excuse for Obama's statements prior to his first election. But he continued his anti-surveillance rhetoric during his second campaign, and there is simply no explanation for that other than lying.

[cmelbye]

Did he? I can't remember that being an important issue at all in the 2012 election.

[mkaziz]

It would be too much to hope that he would make the public aware of why he decided to change his opinion, would it?

Government always thinks it knows better.

[narrator]

What's really funny about GWB is he did a negligible amount for the pro-life crowd. He dangled that fish in front of the rabid pro-lifers but did nothing for them except lip service. I don't want to get into an abortion debate. I'm just saying that the pro-lifers hardly get anything from any politician and it's just funny how they vote based on whatever the lip service is. The politicians have an incentive to never settle anything because those single issue voters would just move on to other issues and weaken their power base.

[alexeisadeski3]

He can't overturn Supreme Court decisions.

[booruguru]

> This is what is so disturbing about Obama and his supporters. He told them bald faced lies about his fundamental views, and is fairly unapologetic about it.

Can you give some examples? Seriously. I can't recall Obama giving a definitive opinion on anything. (e.g. his evolving "views" on gay marriage.)

His detractors keep calling him a leftist, socialist even though he doesn't seem to have a strong (or passionate) opinion on any subject.

[downandout]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQlsS9diBs

[rayiner]

Talking about "majority of power holders agree" is so disingenuous. See: http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/05/poll-public-supports-nsa-sp... ("As we’ve written about before, the American public has widely supported the NSA’s activities before and after the scandal. I’m no fan of the secretive spying, but if the government appears to be acting slowly on surveillance reform, it could be because they’re responding to constituents.").

And this is a poll of people. If you polled likely voters, who skew older (i.e. more who lived through the cold war), you'd see even healthier margins in support of the NSA.

Also, it's a bit of historical revisionism to paint Obama as extremely anti-surveillance. Yes, he opposed certain of Bush's programs, but look at the whole picture. He's answer to "what would you have done instead of going into Iraq?" was "I would have hit Afghanistan harder!" He was a candidate who was self-conscious about the perception of Democrats as being "weak on security" and campaigned to avoid that label. And on his second go, he campaigned as "the guy that killed Osama." He's been quite consistent as someone who wants to project a lot of U.S. military power abroad, and in the grand scheme of things the NSA is part and parcel of that.

[grandalf]

Most Americans learn about the issue from media stories created by firms owned by powerful interests, so public opinion is not surprising.

If you look back at the early coverage of the Snowden leaks in the NY Times, the story was reported but the paper dutifully prepped a character assassination attack on Snowden himself, while intentionally suppressing the story of James Clapper's perjury and while also avoiding suggesting that Obama owed the public an explanation.

[tptacek]

This might or might not be true, but it is also among the oldest arguments in all of propaganda: the will of the people can't be trusted, because it's shaped by malignant elites. Often, it continues on to say that until we can fix that problem, we all need to be governed by this other group of benificent elites.

[grandalf]

That's not really the argument I'm making b/c I do ultimately believe it's the public's own responsibility. But nonetheless, short-term framing of issues is influenced by media, and that's often enough to nudge things quite significantly.

[untog]

Yes. Taking on the government is the wrong fight when they are (at least broadly) representative of public opinion. The fight should be educating people on the dangers of NSA spying, something that I haven't really seen anyone try to do. All commentary comes from the perspective that "NSA = bad" is already a given.

[grandalf]

Hmm. How can the public have an opinion about a secret program? If a leaker revealed that the government had a secret underground concentration camp below the Arizona desert would you view that to be the result of dutiful fulfillment of public service?

[untog]

The public can have an opinion about a secret program when details of it have leaked, as is the case here. But more to the point, if the public don't know how little they know then that's also an area for activism. All of these topics ought to enrage everyone, but they don't because of a lack of awareness. Yet the tech crowd starts the debate assuming everyone is angry.

I have no idea what point you're making with the concentration camp comment.

[rayiner]

Read the techcrunch article: they support the program even after the details leaked.

[grandalf]

>Yes, he opposed certain of Bush's programs, but look at the whole picture.

True, since his days as a Senator from Illinois he has positioned himself as "power ready" by adopting power-friendly "moderate" stances on various key issues.

[nsns]

"A campaign is a marketing effort intended to install a team of people in power."

You've just described the current crisis of representational democracy.

[TelmoMenezes]

It's not current and it's not a crisis. It's working exactly how it was designed to work. We changed, not them. The Internet disrupted the popular perception of democracy by creating a massive global communication channel that is not under the control of the people in power.

[adventured]

It is fascinating how people lay blame.

The most common thing I see is my fellow Americans blaming politicians, bankers, school teachers, lobbyists, cops, unions, almost anyone... except themselves. The truth is, the American people are the problem, and they've spent the last few decades doing everything possible to avoid personal responsibility for the shape of the country.

[ambler0]

To be fair, the American people are and have been the most heavily propagandized people on Earth. I sympathize with your desire to tell people to step up and take personal responsibility, but the truth is that many people can't even think straight. Look at how many people consistently vote against their own interests, identify with their oppressors, etc.

[aaronem]

> the American people are and have been the most heavily propagandized people on Earth

You have heard of North Korea, I hope?

[ambler0]

Your point is well taken. However, propaganda in America is much more insidious than propaganda in North Korea. Don't get me wrong, North Korea is a brutal place and I thank my lucky stars I was born here and not there.

In America, there is always the illusion of a raging debate, which causes people to identify with the views they are presented. In places like North Korea, the propaganda is much more heavy-handed and if you step out of line you are punished much more severely. This causes people to pay lip service to the official views, but not necessarily to believe it in their hearts. In America, stepping out of line is tolerated - to a degree.

EDIT: So perhaps what I should have said originally is not that America is the most heavily propagandized population, but that Americans are the victims of the most sophisticated propaganda machine.

[TelmoMenezes]

Can you spot the irony?

[aaronem]

> It is fascinating how people lay blame.

Oh, yes, very much so! For example, you seem quite effortlessly to lay blame on three hundred or so million people, and that's only counting those alive right now, with no consideration for those who've predeceased us, at least some of whom presumably could be expected, in your formulation, to have had a hand in creating the situation you so readily decry.

But laying blame, while satisfying, rarely does anything to solve a problem. In blaming "the American people" for the current state of things, you imply that they, all three hundred million or so, could have acted, and presumably could still act, to improve the situation. What would you have us do? -- all three hundred million of us, of course.

(For the sake of not seeing you wiggle out of the question that easily, assume in your answer that some method, not intolerable to the modern American sense of morality and ethics, exists of usefully coordinating the actions of almost half a billion human beings.)

[mcv]

> What would you have us do? -- all three hundred million of us, of course.

Vote. For for better people. That is the basis of any democracy. You don't blindly follow your leaders, and you don't blame them for their mistakes and carry on as if there's nothing you can do about it, because you can do something about it. You can vote them out, and vote better people in.

The fact that those three hundred million Americans haven't done that, is entirely their own responsibility. It is the responsibility of the American people is that they allow themselves to be lied to. That you allow every single politician to break their promises, and re-elect them anyway. That you keep voting for the same two parties.

And yes, of course the first-past-the-post district system makes it a lot harder to have someone else win the vote. You'll have to mobilize a lot of people. But you have to start voting for different people. People unrelated to the big two parties. People who do politics in a different way. Find them and vote them into office.

[aaronem]

A glib answer, to be sure. What do you recommend regarding the unelected civil service bureaucracy which has such a large hand in how the United States are administered? I can't imagine seeing any president take on the State Department, for example, but having seen at least one senator do so, I suspect I know who'd win.

[sliverstorm]

And what would you have those of us already doing that do?

[collyw]

> Vote. For better people.

Obama was the best option was he not?

[kordless]

When you spot someone blaming, try not to assign blame when you reply. It interferes with forward movement in the conversation. Also, everyone makes mistakes every now and again. Shit happens.

[aaronem]

I might be more amenable to an argument like this if I saw any possibility of "forward movement", as you describe it, existing in a conversation like this one. I don't, so I'm not; my participation is directed at the goal of amusing myself, nothing more.

[adventured]

Wiggle out of what? I didn't say blame is bad, I said it's fascinating how people lay blame, and specifically what / who they choose to blame (anybody but their own self typically).

I have absolutely no problem taking my share of responsibility as an aware American, for the state of the country (I never said otherwise, you merely incorrectly inferred it). I don't see a very large percentage of people willing to do that these days.

Accepting personal responsibility in a democracy is a critical requirement to then taking action to change the conditions of a nation. So I strongly disagree that laying blame rarely does anything (throwing false blame around at every object you can, however, does nothing)

I say the buck stops with the American people. I'd argue that far more often than not, a country reflects its people. This isn't North Korea, we're not a Communist slave pen.

I believe it's blatantly obvious why America is eroding across nearly every measurement - and has been for decades - and I think it's obvious The People must be the root of it. Politicians come and go, Presidents come and go, Fed chairpersons come and go, corporate leaders come and go, educators come and go. The culture is created by and evolves with the people of a nation. The politicians that get elected are a direct reflection of the culture. The people set the standard for the culture, and that culture is what rules a nation, on its ethics, its beliefs, its standard of 'the good' or fairness, or whatever else you want to refer to.

If the ~250 million adult Americans are not responsible for the state of their country, who exactly would be? The Russians? The Chinese? The British?

Who voted Obama into office? Who voted Bush into office? Who voted Reid into office? Who voted Boehner into office? Who voted Pelosi into office? Who voted all their priors into office? Who allowed that to happen by inaction? And on and on it goes, encompassing the radical majority of Americans, either directly or indirectly by willful inaction. Who else is at fault for the net value of the elected representatives of the last ~50 years, if not the people of America?

How many are standing by, not saying a word, not lifting a finger, even while they disagree with what's happening? How many don't even disagree? My personal observation and opinion say that's a scary number as well.

Who has failed to rise up and protest or take action (voting, informing, etc) against the endless wave of scandals and violations going back decades leading to our current condition as a country? That would be: the extreme majority of Americans.

Who bought into the fear pandering? Who is still buying into it?

Who has bankrupted the country financially by more than happily licking up all the obviously fraudulent political promises? And then going back to the trough to ask for more. What do you think the soon to be $20 trillion in public debt that can never be repaid (or even reduced) went to? To buy votes of course, on both sides of the aisle.

Meanwhile the Republicans blame the Democrats, and the Democrats blame the Republicans, and the majority sit and watch Leno instead of doing something about the politics and shape of the country (both of which they supposedly think are terrible per polls). Inaction, complaining and paralysis rules the majority - all by choice.

Who favored the war response after 9/11? The radical majority of Americans, blatantly.

The security policies since 9/11? Where's the wide spread protesting? Didn't exist, doesn't exist. Where was the large scale outrage over the Patriot Act? Didn't exist.

Who doesn't show a bit of outrage at the droning - murder - of innocent civilians overseas? The radical majority of Americans.

Who is numbing themselves 24/7 in a endless orgy of consumerism - which has been going on increasingly for decades - while the core fundamentals of the economy just keep rotting out from under them (you of course realize the actual unemployment rate isn't 6.7%), as they stay perpetually hooked on cheap consumer financing?

Who's supposedly wildly unhappy with Congress? And what have they done about it the last few elections? Well a quick check on the voter turnout numbers tells you all you need to know: the majority mostly complains and not much else.

It's a culture that can't wait to put itself to sleep so it doesn't have to think (see the hyper self-medicating that Americans are doing for example).

Who is looking the other way as the NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, TSA, DHS and an endless parade of agencies violate an endless list of laws and Constitutional lines in the sand? Where were the American people as Hoover reigned for decades? Willfully absent in their give-a-shit of course. Well Hoover set the standard for illegal spying on the American people.

Who is not caring one iota about the cause of their health problems, and just keeps on gorging the soda and fast food, not exercising, ballooning in obesity, and whining about health care costs, looking to blame anyone and everyone but themselves for their condition? It's the insurance companies, it's the doctors, it's the hospitals, it's Obamacare, it's the politicians. No, it's the majority of Americans.

Who was happy to borrow an ever increasing amount of easy money for college? Whose fault is that? The politicians? The Fed? Educators? Bankers? Or the people that take out the loans and the system they haven't cared to do anything about? Zero personal responsibility, find someone else to blame for it. It's unfair they forced Joe to sign up for $80,000 in student loans, obviously. Americans are unhappy with education costs? I've got a brilliant idea: take action - 20 years ago - and work on a solution instead of whining about it and putting it off.

The housing bubble? The corporate leaders blame the people that took out the loans, the people that took out the loans blame the greedy corporate leaders, others blame the Fed, or real estate agents, or brokers, or or or. Oh look, turns out it's the fault of the American people mostly as a whole for doing absolutely nothing about their broken system. It's a bankrupt culture of consumerism.

They don't want the budget cut, they don't want entitlements cut, and they don't want to pay higher personal taxes, and or they want someone else to foot the bill, and so on. They want a much higher minimum wage, but they don't want to pay 25% more for the things they buy at McDonalds or Walmart. I believe this general attitude represents the vast majority (not every single person).

This attitude of blame someone else pervades nearly every aspect of American culture. I say: start with taking personal responsibility for your role (however big or small), and then do your best to take actions to correct the problems you see. It's about America becoming an involved democracy.

[araes]

Many of the "Who" -> "Americans" call / responses I believe. However, it feels like correlation without causation. Yes, statistically, the majority of Americans are self-interested actors who vote as individuals, not as well meaning members of a greater whole. They're people. But so are the voters in most other representative governments. I would instead say that they are just the logical developed state of a nation that extols Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (all very individual goals) while situating them in a place with a very rapid, capitalistic feedback loop that gives carrots for highly self-interested choices, and sticks for choices which benefit the larger social group.

This will be a bit of a stretch, but nations are kind of like equation solvers. You start with ICs (form of government, economic views, population diversity), BCs (neighbours, trade, media), source terms (research, development, legal activism) , ect... and then start moving through time, trying to solve for a converged social state that's stable. Some of that junk just isn't stable and diverges spectacularly. Some are only locally stable, so you get periodic upheaval. And some are stable solutions and converge well. Almost every IC for America is one that favors absolute personal freedom over the welfare of the group. Our government rewards people for thinking locally and voting in their self interest. Our economic model is one which absolutely rewards people on self-interest. The idea model (touted here and elsewhere) is to develop the minimal effort product, market it extensively, build a loyal following, and then go public so that early backers / founders can cash out. At which point...who cares? Next big project and the public can get soaked. Even our population distribution favors it. "The land of bounty and opportunity where anyone with enough determination and drive can be a millionaire!" what kind of folks is that going to attract?

And like I said, it all converges. The media used to balance some of this, but as the iterations have continued, the bankruptcies, the buyouts, and the new investors, they've gotten more infected, to the point where they're now largely just mouthpieces for whatever self-interested individual or group speaks through them.

Are we divergent? Hard to tell. We could be a convergently stable Rome, stagnating as we develop ever more robust home tofu delivery visualizations. With the core of extreme individualism, we could theoretically be explosively divergent. However, I'm hoping for locally stable, so that we can get enough upheaval to kick us over the nearby hill and maybe find a better minima, where we once again aren't risk averse, dare to build big projects that change the world, and possess a government that does more than go into spasmodic seizures every two months.

[tolmasky]

A system that relies on all of it's constituents being informed and politically active in order to be successful is structurally unsound. This in my opinion is the true problem with our representational democracy. I am wary of blaming people who have difficulty day to day making ends meet for not caring enough about spying, etc.

[fooqux]

I'm not sure the founding fathers could have predicted what laid in store for the country or the world.

We have reached the point, I believe, where it is impossible to expect the majority of the population to be knowledgeable in all the various facets of running one of the most powerful countries in the world. Economics. Cultures. Science. These are all words which could be separated into thousands of sub-topics. You're expecting somebody to be "informed" about stem-cells, the likely implications of raising the interest rate by 0.1%, the differences between computer "memory" and "storage", and the differences of bowing to or shaking the hand of another world leader. Plus somehow keeping a full-time job and raising a family.

This is where media is supposed to step up, do the research, and present the facts to the populace. I believe that a few people figured out long ago that if you can control the media, you control the country. It's a big ship and it steers rather slow, but I still think it is true.

Hell, we still live in a world where laws are created based on books written thousands of years ago, where people doubt global warming because "man cannot possibly change what God created" and/or because the bible doesn't mention it.

The problem is the same as it's always been: Us. Asshats worm their way into the system and through fear, money, charisma, or subterfuge they subvert whatever they can modify to suit their own desires. If anything what we need is a system that can prevent this somehow, which is what the founding fathers were attempting to create. The entire western culture (likely others as well), needs to change, and I don't see that happening without something major (think The Day the Earth Stood Still type shit here) happening.

[yuhong]

I wonder how http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition would do.

[wylee]

When I was born, on the day of my birth, how much personal responsibility did I have for the state of the USA and the world in general? (None)

When did I start to have the even the most basic understanding of what's really going on in the world?

At what point did I become culpable?

At that point, what power did I have to actually influence anything (given 400+ years of policy, expansion, entrenchment, racism, etc).

I agree to an extent that individuals can and should take some personal responsibility, but that doesn't address systemic effects. And the mere notion that we should take some responsibility doesn't lead to an effective course of action.

Suggesting that we vote (which someone else suggested).. well, that's almost comical given the premise of the thread, which is that you can't trust politicians, no matter how progressive or sincere they might seem.

As much as I do take responsibility (and feel guilty about not doing more), I still haven't figured out how to have any real influence.

I've spent plenty of time complaining about other people and their lack of participation too, and I'm not sure what difference that has made. Merely pointing out the problem (or what I perceive the problem to be) doesn't change anything by itself.

Edit: Added a word. Formatting.

[skylan_q]

Personal/Individual responsibility is a dirty word. There is no incentive for a representational democracy to create an environment that fosters the development of personal blame. It can only grow and continue if it focuses on social responsibility and blaming the other group. Like 1984's Goldstein.

[geetee]

Please elaborate on this statement.

[dictum]

> a massive global communication channel that is not under the control of the people in power.

They're working their hardest to correct that horrible mistake.

[joe_inferno]

Net neutrality isn't dead because the people asked for it

[thisiswrong]

I'm not so worried about net neutrality. I mean it's easy enough for the average person to eventually understand the importance of all traffic being treated the same.

Copyright extremism (and 'protecting' children - Firewall of Cameron) is what we should be worried about. Our rulers have chosen copyright as their 'Trojan horse' of choice [1] for regaining the arbitrary censorship powers that they once enjoyed. Sadly, most people can't come to terms with the importance of copyright reform in the digital age. They fail to understand that copyright has always been used by rulers as means of controlling the rhetoric and preventing 'non-aligned' publishers from reaching large audiences [2].

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-monopoly-was-created-a... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

[abvdasker]

No. Wrong. It is current and it is a crisis when campaign finance is essentially unlimited and politicians are more accountable to their financiers than their constituents. American politics were bad and they're getting worse post-Citizens United.

[clarkmoody]

I believe it's high time to repeal the 17th Amendment and return a fair bit of power to the states. This would ease the democracy crisis and decentralize some of the power from D.C.

[crusso]

Yeah, the power structure in DC has gotten way too comfortable for the people living there. Look at how unaffected the DC housing market was by the crisis over the last 6 years.

The people in Washington aren't going to relinquish any of their power, though. An Article V convention of the states is about the only hope.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/enacting_the_liberty_...

[quaunaut]

> Look at how unaffected the DC housing market was by the crisis over the last 6 years.

You mean the same way most American cities went?

http://timiacono.com/wp-content/uploads/10-11-30_cs-hpi.png

[crusso]

Sorry, I should have said "least affected".

Then when you consider that Washington moved UP vs all other cities in that graph, DC has done really well.

My point remains. Thanks for the data to refer to next time. :)

[BrandonMarc]

I agree about a constitutional convention ... trouble is, that sword cuts both ways. It's a great opportunity for those you agree with to get major changes through ... but it's a great opportunity for those you disagree with.

[brown9-2]

How does the indirect election of Senators help democracy?

[chongli]

No, just the current crisis in a subset of electoral systems. A voting system such as Range Voting[0] would go a long way towards solving these problems, predominant among them being the issue of spoilers.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_voting#Example

[brd]

Any campaign will be a marketing effort in any context. The crisis is that the marketing effort is the only data point that most of the voting population considers prior to the vote. Without an informed population there is no incentive for honest campaigns.

[aaronem]

You can turn that argument around just as easily; without honest campaigns, there is no incentive for an informed population, because there is no meaningful chance for popular support to elevate a candidate running an honest campaign to the same heights attained by those to whom all weapons are friends.

[brd]

Politicians are public figures by definition. There is plenty of information out there to make informed decisions with or without the existence of honest campaigns.

The only reason there is "no meaningful chance for popular support" of an honest candidate is because the voting population doesn't reward it; and perhaps more importantly, the voting population doesn't punish dishonesty.

[aaronem]

> There is plenty of information out there to make informed decisions

It's funny you should say that, given the number of people who thought they were making informed decisions to support Obama, especially in 2008, and who have since found so many reasons to feel so deeply betrayed.

Short of mind-reading, I'm not sure how you imagine it possible for citizens, almost all of whom have lives to lead which do not revolve around the ambitions of the current crop of politicians, to inform themselves in as accurate and precise a fashion as you seem to consider trivial; for almost everyone, it comes down to a choice among competing sets of analysts, all of whom arrogate unto themselves the mantle of reliable authority, and all of whom have not only equal reason to lie in support of their own desiderata, but equal lack of compunction to dissuade them from such mendacity. (That's why they call corruption corruption; like any rot, it spreads.)

As for "punish[ing] dishonesty", I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on precisely what benefit there is in choosing one pack of liars over another. Given the track record of American politicians, and especially of American presidential candidates, favoring one in particular seems less likely to succeed at "punish[ing] dishonesty" than to act as a strong selective pressure in favor of the most skillful and least scrupulous liars available -- something I'd argue was not just perceptible but obvious in modern American politics, except that I think the presidency has been the province of liars since at least as far back as Andrew Jackson.

[skylan_q]

Current?

I think it's the defining trait of representational democracy.

[psaintla]

Does it really have to be that cynical? Don't you think it is entirely possible pre-2008 Obama's opinions were formed with the same information as the rest of us and post-2008 Obama received more information (national security briefings) that completely blew away his belief system? I don't agree with much of what the Obama administration has done regarding domestic and international surveillance but I always feel like we should give ALL Presidents a little slack when it comes to these things because they have two burdens that the rest of us do not. Information and the responsibility to act on that information.

[grandalf]

Good point. I used to be more sympathetic to that line of reasoning. It's tightly coupled to the argument for the existence of state secrets... granting the state the power not to act in a fully transparent manner.

How might any institution act if it wanted to earn the credibility to behave in a way that was non-transparent to its constituents?

A firm might pay out consistent dividends or go public and comply with the additional regulatory requirements. A government might declassify information as quickly as possible to prove that information was classified judiciously (once the classified status was no longer needed).

In the US, there is still lots of classified information that is decades old. Clearly the government feels no need to earn its credibility when it comes to what information may be classified and for what purpose (or for how long). For a long time this was fine b/c the public had no good reason not to trust.

Things like WikiLeaks and Snowden's leaks have given us insight into the kinds of things that are classified. The most damning in my opinion were the WikiLeaks revelations that information was classified during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that effectively filters out bad news from the information available to reporters. This is not judicious use of secrecy, it's using secrecy to achieve a propaganda motive.

Snowden's leaks reveal more than just the existence of a secret program, they reveal that the program was deliberately extralegal and far-reaching in a way that normal legal and law enforcement processes would never have allowed to happen.

It comes down to the question of whether we value (at a basic level) the rule of law, or if we prefer to be ruled by a trusted council of elders that makes secret decisions on our behalf without any kind of transparency or accountability.

[psaintla]

I agree with your points, I'd personally prefer full transparency over anything else but that is something that needs to be hashed out by the legislative branch, which conveniently gets very little blame. If any of us have an issue with the way government surveillance is performed we shouldn't be looking at the President, we should be looking at Congress since they control the budget and can pass laws to limit actions they find are in legal grey lines.

[grandalf]

> we should be looking at Congress

I 100% agree. However I am not sure whether what the NSA has been doing had any kind of congressional oversight. It certainly should.

[tmzt]

If so it took about 3 days.

http://c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/transcript/transcript.ph...

See the question and non-answer at 17:36.

The first time I saw that live on C-SPAN my heart actually sank. It was huge wasted opportunity for the people, through their direct donations to a candidate, to make things better. In that moment the President-Elect proved one of two things: he had no idea what was going on, or he willfully misrepresented the notion of reform through the election. A third possibility is even more frightening, something or someone changed his position for him.

But more than that, the President-Elect laughed it off as a joke, as if asking a question about the state of intelligence reform was the same thing as asking the contents of the PDB, as if the plebs simple weren't entitled to a straight answer on something affecting the function of 'their' government. And this wasn't a nobody asking, it was Candy Crawley (I believe, the transcript did not state that but her first name was given as Candy.)

We elected an former Constitutional scholar as President, and he appointed a Civil Rights division lawyer as Attorney General, and they have seriously damaged both the Constitution (whose spirit remains the saving grace of this nation) and Civil Rights and Liberties.

[psaintla]

You realize The President got his very first intelligence briefing the day before that press conference right?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/05/obama-to-rec...

[tmzt]

I'm sure I noticed that in my Reader, yes.

[ilovepolitics]

It's a combination of hubris and intentional ignorance on the part of OP and others like him.

It's really fascinating to see otherwise intelligent people completely unable to challenge their own beliefs about the nature of the world.

Is Obama simply reacting to new information he has been made privy to since becoming the president? Is it possible that there are genuine threats to America that are not made public? Is it possible there are realities of foreign affairs that we may not understand?

No, the world is just as I conceive it and Obama is a liar prone to malfeasance.

Accepting otherwise would challenge the safe bubble of the reality I have constructed. One where everyone fundamentally shares my value system and I have the necessary information and skills of deduction to construct an accurate conception of reality.

I wonder if it's something particular to technically skilled people. They have a knack for figuring out things that most people in society don't care for or don't have the aptitude for so they assume that that applies to all things, even things outside of their sphere of experience or aptitude.

[grandalf]

Your comment reads like some kind of passage from scripture, offering humble ignorance of reality and blindly placing trust in some entity to take care of your best interest.

In the real world, it's clear that institutions become corrupt. Enron is one example. So is GroupOn. So is the NSA.

I suppose you think we should not let our faith be shaken by the revelation that corruption has been found in some NSA programs. The Catholic church has made a similar argument about why its members should still continue to support the institution even though it was found that it systematically placed priests accused of child abuse in other parishes.

We have new information, and so it's perfectly reasonable to reconsider our previous worldview. Sure we can just accept the institutional response at face value, but if we hope to reform the system we ought to be critical and expect actual change to occur.

[ilovepolitics]

You haven't actually considered that the system is reasonable as it is. Which is the hubris that I'm talking about.

I don't blindly trust institutions. But I also don't blindly distrust institutions when the system they perpetuate has merit.

Life is quite good in America if you're in the middle class as compared to the standards of living in the past and around the world.

I'm careful with my judgements as I understand that I don't fully understand all of the realities and circumstances and interests at play. I can only look at the result, which from my perspective is quite good relative to what I know about the world today and in the past.

Are there serious problems in society? Yes.

I went through a stage of cynicism when I was in middle school through high school so I can appreciate your perspective.

[grandalf]

Speaking of blinders, this sentence illustrates the pair you are evidently wearing:

> I can only look at the result, which from my perspective is quite good relative to what I know about the world today and in the past.

You are judging the state of the entire system by the level of personal comfort you experience and your heavily biased view of history.

It sounds to me like you are judging America's actions to be morally superior simply because America enjoys a high standard of living. I'd argue that a high standard of living out to result in a high moral standard for our institutions and officials.

[fleitz]

You know the 'middle class' is people making 250K+ right?

In most countries the middle class are doing fine and live well.

It appears that high school and middle school have done their job of building trust in US institutions. Yes, it's completely alright that Mr. Obama went from constitutional scholar to repeatedly lying to the public about the scope of surveillance in the country.

Remember the debate he wanted to have about surveillance but just forgot about having for 5 years? How about the rinse wash repeat of Grenwald says you're doing X, we're not doing X, here's your documents proving your doing X.

Ends justify the means right? Middle class is doing well, ghetto don't matter! Just wave a flag and say you're free!

[dllthomas]

Wikipedia says: "Depending on the class model used, the middle class constitutes anywhere from 25% to 66% of households."

Fewer than 5% of Americans make more than 250k/yr. So either that is not the cut-off for middle class, or a huge percentage of the former middle class is now lower class.

[ilovepolitics]

That's not the definition of middle class. It's usually put at households making more than $100k.

You're simply wrong.

And you haven't actually considered or responded to my argument. In fact this is exactly what I'm talking about. Hubris and intentional ignorance.

[United857]

A good test of this hypothesis is this: if Hillary Clinton runs for President, what would be her take (support or oppose)?

Unlike Obama the Senator, as Secretary of State she would have served on the National Security Council and would have been privy to much of the same intelligence info. Therefore, if she's still opposed on surveillance issues vs. Obama, that would be a very telling sign.

[aaronem]

Well, to be sure, the job always seems to turn their hair white.

On the other hand, I'm easily cynical enough to wonder whether a modern president's staff hairdresser is expected to have an unusual degree of skill with dyes and bleaches.

[afterburner]

Or:

Before election: dye hair, look energetic.

After election: don't bother dyeing, look like you're settling into the position.

[dragonwriter]

> I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign.

The evidence during his time in office and the battles he has chosen to fight from the White House suggests that the view he expressed during the campaign about the critical importance of health care reform toward a more universal system is, in fact, one that he holds in office.

On a less policy and more meta-political level there are, I would say, quite a few indications that his frequently expressed view that people who want change must "be the change [they] want" and not rely on getting some figure in office and then expecting change to magically happen on its own is also a belief he holds honestly in office.

[mpyne]

> I would say, quite a few indications that his frequently expressed view that people who want change must "be the change [they] want" and not rely on getting some figure in office and then expecting change to magically happen on its own is also a belief he holds honestly in office.

A view he also expressed during a memorial I attended for the Washington Navy Yard shootings, in regards to gun control for those with mental illnesses. Sadly I think he's right.

[dkl]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

  Promises kept: 45%
  Compromised: 25%
  Broken: 22%
  Stalled: 1%
  In the works: 6%
  not rated: 1%

Your comment resonated with me, then I decided to check the facts.

[angrybits]

Yeah you can tell that that those are facts, because it says so right there in the domain name.

[dkl]

Yeah you can tell that that those are facts, because it says so right there in the domain name.

Wow, you're adding a lot to this discussion.

[mpyne]

You're one of those "when the facts aren't with you, pound the table" types, eh?

[tunap]

"I'd be surprised if Obama holds any of the views he expressed during his campaign."

His nomination of the original author of the Patriot Act[1] to be his running mate was my confirmation that we were no longer one choice away from a dictatorship. Geitner & Gates' retention was just salt in the wound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Counterterrorism_Act_o...

[afterburner]

Come on now. He's still a Democrat, with Democratic views, hardly pursuing the agendas the Republicans were pursuing before (for example, trying to get rid of social security; do you remember all the Bush town halls on that?). He's not going to suddenly oppose abortion.

First and foremost on his platform was bringing back bipartisanship in Washington. And he sure tried his damndest to do that, trying time and time again to compromise with Republicans, trying to get them on board, trying to meet them halfway. That was him keeping that promise, and it's one I think he fundamentally believes in. He's always trying to build a consensus, not trying to be a firebrand. If others chose to ignore that repeated refrain in his campaigning, then too bad.

He also expended nearly all his initial political capital on health care, as promised. And reformed health care. Please let's not forget this, as it's skewered the Democrats more than once in the last 50 years.

[joering2]

> We should not be surprised that Obama did not reverse any of Bush's controversial decisions because they were not actually controversial among those with power or with the potential to gain power.

We are not surprised out of the blue; we are deeply disappointed, as he clearly won elections based on promises he pretty much knew he cannot keep.

Similarly this would be like getting into relationship based on trust and someone shows you their big house, their boat, their company, claim they can have children and care about animals, while within a time, it turns out that person is a neutered scumbag that runs a horse-kill house and that house and boat was his friend. And then he tells you "what do you expected honey, I wanted to be with you, this is normal that I lied otherwise I wouldn't win your affections".

Sure, plenty of us could do that; its just a matter of choosing one or another side of life: good or bad. If Obama knew he cannot change anything and continue anyways, he's just a scumbag like any other scam artist.

[cjf4]

The portion of the status quo most related to spying is "Safe and Peaceful", so not sure I blame him.

[joe_the_user]

And you throw-in the even more Onionesque: "A review of candidates speeches reveals the apparent 'strong principles' were actually a clever packaging of euphemisms, glittering generalities, rainbow-ruses and Barnum-statements"

I think Obama probably holds those small number of positions he unambiguously stated as a Candidate. He like doesn't hold doesn't hold the positions that he seemed to articulate but didn't really, unambiguously assert. Which is of the things people thought he said.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

[fleitz]

Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.