On matters ranging from rendition, FISA, and the Patriot Act to Guantanamo and interrogation techniques, I think both supporters and critics of Obama are detecting a now-predictable pattern on homeland-security issues. Run hard left when a candidate, and then adopt Bush-centrist positions when elected — and paper-over all of it with a veneer of soaring ACLU-like rhetoric.
The Left is slowly catching on. Yet conservatives seem befuddled by the about-faces. Some conservatives are happy that he now seems to have come down to earth and realized that many of the much-caricatured measures of the last eight years in fact do explain the absence of another 9/11-like attack. Other conservatives remain forever resentful that, sort of shamelessly, Obama and others of his party, have cynically demagogued the issue, knowing all the time that those with responsibility for governance could ill-afford the reckless ’shred the Constitution’ slurs that proved so politically resonant during the opposition years.