Democratic postmortems on Barack Obama’s disappointing first year in the Oval Office have emphasized, as the president himself did, difficulties inherited from “the last eight years.” Republicans, for their part, credit public opposition to Obama’s overreaching policies. But a full explanation goes much deeper. Obama is failing because he has turned the constitutional functions of the presidency upside down.
Last week, a little more than 24 hours after the FBI warned senators not to disclose the sensitive information that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was cooperating with the FBI, the White House shared the information with the news media.
Attorney General Eric Holder has been the Obama administration’s point man in revising the nation’s approach to terrorism. Holder said last summer that it was his decision to reinvestigate CIA operatives who had employed enhanced interrogation techniques during the Bush administration, although these individuals had been cleared by the Justice Department’s career prosecutors.
You know how at Super Bowl parties you often have to endure the painful commentary of non-football fans who feel the need to pontificate about various aspects of the game? Well, at least those fans aren’t usually U.S. senators, and they aren’t usually intent on making their peculiar views the basis of a Justice Department investigation.
