With the Protect America Act (aka FISA on ‘roids) set to expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday, and the Senate deadlocked on the question of immunity for telcos, the Administration once again tried to employ its favorite strategy. Rather than support any kind of extension the Bush Administration is demanding that the Senate pass telco immunity or risk a veto. The conservative chorus brays how the Democrats are outing national security at risk. And why not play chicken with a vital issue of national security? This strategy has worked for Bush time and again, with no real consequences.
Still, the script did not go quite to schedule this time. When it became clear that the President could not force through the Senate Bill he wanted and get the needed changes in the House (the House Bill does not contain immunity for telcos), the President backed down and grudgingly agreed to a 15-day extension of the existing “Protect America Act.”
The question here is whether or not the Senate Democrats have learned that the temper of the country has changed. We all care about national security. But increasingly, the American people have grown disgusted with the way this Administration plays politics with national security and whittles away at civil liberties. But many Democratic leaders remain traumatized by the 2002 elections, when voters caught up in the post-9/11 scare and the hype in preparation for the invasion of Iraq decided to overlook things like the Enron and Worldcom scandals and voted out war heroes like Max Clealand who expressed even the slightest doubt about supporting our Commander in Chief in “this time of war.” And so, despite the election of anti-war Democrats in 2006, despite the President’s abysmal approval ratings, despite the fact that the majority of Americans now consider the Iraq War an enormous mistake and want to see it ended, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the President’s media cheer leading squad continue to use the same rhetoric as if it were still 2002, and too many Democrats still tremble.
Let us be perfectly clear. The one issue delaying this bill is the question of retroactive immunity for Bush’s telco pals. While I understand why Bush would go to the wire for his buddies, why any Democrat would voluntarily so undermine the rule of law baffles me. The one conclusion I can reach is that too many of them remain mired in the belief that if the Democrats are seen as “playing politics with national security” then they will lose in ’08.
But as Chris Dodd and some other Senate Democrats understand, and as the House Democrats understood when they passed a bill without the telco immunity provision, the universe has changed since 2002. Even if political exigencies justified such an abandonment of principle as granting telcos retroactive immunity, too many Senate Democrats have the political calculation wrong. With the Democrats chosing among candidates determined to end the war and both of whom have promised to fight telco immunity, and with Republicans poised to nominate the man who has consistently defied the Administration on torture and other issues where the Administration has played the “national security” card, the message from the people should be clear: The free ride for the Administration to savage our civil liberties is over! The panic is past, and our natural distrust of a government granted unlimited power to “protect us” has returned.
I hope that the members of the Senate, particularly the Democratic members who have supported telco immunity, will take these two weeks to learn this valuable lesson. Because if you act as if it were still 2002, and give the President everything he asks for, you may indeed succeed in setting back the clock. In 2006, the American people proved we had enough of wireless wire tapping, and that enough of us were finally willing to vote out a party that supported an assault on our civil liberties. Must we prove that lesson again in 2008, by once again voting out a party that, to praphrase Benjamin Franklin, seeks to trade liberty for security only to discover it has neither?
Stay tuned . . . .
I’m pleased that some Democrats are beginning to see the light, but I don’t understand why. The failure of Chris Dodd’s presidential campain suggests to me that voters don’t care about violations of their Constitutional rights.
I don’t think this telecom immunity is about protecting the telecom companies at all. Of course they would be preferred not to be sued, just as I would preferred to not be annoyed by mosquitoes, but I’m not going to get really bent out of shape about a damn mosquito. (No, wait. Make that gnats. A crow found dead of mosquito-borne West Nile virus in my back yard made national news two years ago. Ever since then I’ve been a little more wary of them.)
I think the real reason Bush et al are pushing for telecom immunity is that companies could be compelled to testify in courts of law about exactly what they were doing at the president’s behest. I don’t think George or Dick or any of those people want that to come out.
Alan: the problem with PResidential campaigns is that it is not a single issue that drives people. People have to weigh all the issues. I gave money to Dodd when he made his stand to encourage him, but I don’t think I would have voted for him had he made it this far.
John: Yup. The problem with pulling all the things that the administration appears to have pulled is that it is very hard afterwards to cover up the trail.
Harold, I hope you’re right. Once the Senate was the branch of Congress that was slightly more in tune with the Bill of Rights, but that hasn’t been the case for the past few years. We’ll all see how things stand a year from now.
John, you should respect gnats more. If a lawsuit succeeds in landing per-violation penalties, AT&T could find itself changed into a co-op overnight.