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I’m actually a little more sympathetic to Conor Friersdorf than this (though I am assuredly not a fan). It’s hard for antiwar people to find a home within the two party system we have, and Obama is uniquely susceptible to criticism on foreign and national security issues because those policies are largely his alone. It’s difficult to know exactly how much blame to affix to Obama for certain domestic disappointments or successes because separating his role from that of Congress is tricky–we call it “Obamacare” but it’s equally as much “Reidcare” or “Pelosicare” (and quite possibly more accurate to use those labels, since Reid was almost LBJ-esque getting the bill through the Senate, and Pelosi’s role in passing it was no less impressive). On some domestic bills it’s easier than others, but it’s complicated in most domestic bills while aside from a few Congressional actions on Guantanamo and the loathsome NDAA, Obama owns just about everything his Administration has done in FP/national security areas. His record is pretty lousy to us civil libertarians, no doubt about it, and just about the only argument you can use is the one that he faces political constraints on his actions. Which is true, he does face constraints in this as well as every other area. But my basic take on this is that Obama’s foreign policy was designed to be popular with the public while avoiding the expenditure of any political capital that might be needed on domestic matters. And that it was. He could easily have thrown the civil libertarians a few bones here and there, struck a better balance, but one of the more persistent facts of first term Obama was a consistent refusal to take the morale of his base in pushing the course he thought was politically advantageous (to do so would undoubtedly have been “small” and “petty”), usually in hopes of striking some sort of rare bipartisan comity or settlement. Sometimes he was right about those choices but usually not, it cost him big, and I hope he’s learned his lesson. I think maybe he has.

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