President Barack Obama’s re-election was heralded as a resounding victory for liberalism in America.
The Nation’s Ari Melber called his re-election “the most decisive mandate for an assertive, progressive governing model in well over a generation.”
Joan Walsh, editor-at-large for the online magazine Salon.com, called it a “victory for the Democratic ideal of activist government and a mandate for more of it.”
Yet, a passing glance at the Obama administration’s record reveals many policies that should make most liberals, especially those who paid attention during the Bush administration, quite uneasy. In fact, Obama has made outright efforts to expand some of the most abusive policies from former President George W. Bush’s administration.
The Obama administration’s love affair with the use of drone strikes as its chief counter-terrorism strategy has been actively documented. As of September 2012, Obama had authorized six times more drone strikes than Bush, resulting in four times as many deaths, according to CNN’s Peter Bergen and Megan Braun.
Similarly, warrantless wiretaps and surveillance can be expected to continue as Obama has now extended both the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), and indefinite detention language – which could apply to American citizens – was codified by the administration with the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.
Just two weeks ago, The Washington Post revealed that the Obama administration is continuing to use secret renditions — the process in which terrorist suspects are detained and interrogated overseas — although the administration has halted the Bush administration’s use of torture.
And finally, John Brennan, Obama’s nominee for CIA director who worked for the CIA under Bush, has supported Bush’s torture program, extraordinary renditions and the FAA. His instrumental role in shaping Obama’s drone program should alone give any self-described liberal a pause.
Yet, time and time again, Obama is lauded by liberals and progressives as their man in Washington.
This isn’t to say the president hasn’t adopted many traditionally progressive ideals.
Obama’s embrace of same-sex marriage, his stalwart support for ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and his most recent commitment to enacting some form of gun control legislation are all policies die-hard liberals can rally around.
However, I fear many left-leaning Americans have been so content to accept these tiny victories that they have overlooked Obama’s more disreputable policies due to a fear that there is no viable alternative in the Republican Party.
Consequentially, liberals, so passionately fueled by anti-Republican sentiment, managed to enthusiastically re-elect a center-right Democrat who has done more to institutionalize more egregious, neo-conservative policies than any Republican so far.
Some progressives may argue that Obama’s presidency is a compromise and that his domestic policy has been more focused on what one might call a liberal agenda.
Yet, even ObamaCare, the President’s most celebrated victory that is often held up as the defining legislative win for liberals during his presidency, took many of its cues from the Heritage Foundation, a popular conservative think tank.
In fact, this discrepancy calls into question the political divide that has grown exponentially since Obama’s election to the presidency.
Given these facts, how sincere can the conservative antagonism toward his policies be? Similarly, how uninformed is the liberal adulation?
With Obama’s second term secured, progressives and liberals need to challenge the president’s continued use and expansion of Bush-era policies or else we can expect the country to continue in a more authoritarian direction.
And the legacy of the Bush administration will endure, whether a Democrat or Republican occupies the oval office.
