Yes He Can, But Will He? Obama Hesitates to Make the Tough Calls

By Robert Kuttner, Huffington Post. Posted May 26, 2009.

The New York Times editorial page effusively praised the president's stance. Its editorial of May 22 began, "We listened to President Obama's speech on terrorism and detention policy with relief and optimism."

But in two news stories, May 23, Times reporters first pointedly questioned whether the prolonged detention concept was constitutional -- and then suggested that Obama had handed Republicans "a wedge issue."

Having taken a principled position, Obama now needs to deliver -- with a strategy for handling the remaining detainees that both addresses the security concerns and offers more than a fig leaf of constitutionality.

All week, Obama demonstrated his great skills as a teacher and orator, but it remains to be seen how he will use these outsized gifts as challenges on several fronts continue to unfold. He chose to invest some political capital on the issue of reproductive rights, but not on the issue of gay marriage; he took a real political risk in beginning the process of shutting down the infamous prison at Guantanamo but not in aligning himself with a constitutional treatment of detainees wherever they are ultimately housed. And though he criticized financial excess in general terms and had some good things to say about credit card abuses, he has not yet thrown the full weight of his office behind comprehensive financial reform.

It is tempting to explain his choices simply in terms of his own history and deep knowledge of some issues but not others. If there is any issue that Obama knows well, it is constitutional law. One can see the blend of idealism and calculation in his decision to close Guantanamo, but not to insist on full due process for detainees. Maybe this is all that public opinion and anxious legislators can take for now. We'll have to see how the public reacts as he moves forward with concrete plans to change procedures and move detainees.

On financial reform, however, it is very hard, based on past performance, to imagine Obama staking out a courageous position and trying to move public opinion on an issue where most of the Senate is siding with, say, Wall Street. In the coming months, there will be plenty of opportunities. They will include whether to enact regulation of derivatives, hedge funds and private equity companies; whether to support Elizabeth Warren's proposal for a financial product safety commission; whether to keep on bailing out insolvent banks versus taking them into receivership; and how to get serious about saving several millions of American families from foreclosure. On all of these fronts, administration policy to date has been too weak and far too kind to Wall Street.

One thing we learned this week is that whatever this president's deficits, they do not include a lack of eloquence, leadership, or nerve. It makes his attempt to straddle the issue of the detainees seem less than fully thought through, and his dithering on the financial crisis all the more bewildering.

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Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His recent book is Obama's Challenge.

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