Obama and rendition

Obama has decided to keep the program of "rendition," i.e. taking people off the streets in other countries, and transferring them to another country, for detention, interrogation, or prosecution.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea, and I was a little surprised when I read the article in the LA Times that the Obama administration is keeping it. There was some reason for optimism in the Times article:

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

I kept my ears open yesterday to see what other people were thinking, and, fortunately, what I read was positive. Andrew Sullivan, who has great credibility on issues like this, is not worried. He thinks that "The LA Times got rolled," by people on the right who want to argue that there is no difference, or very little difference, between Bush and Obama policies. That way, of course, Bush doesn't look so bad. The argument is that, once Obama sees the gory details of the war on terror up close, he will have no choice but to use the same techniques that the Bushies did.

Sulllivan isn't buying it.

What some on the far right seem not to grasp is that opposition to torture is not about being soft on terrorism. It is about being effective against terrorism - ensuring that intelligence is not filled with torture-generated garbage, that we retain the moral high-ground in a long war against theocratic violence, and that we can better identify, capture, kill or bring to justice those who threaten our way of life. Rendition and temporary detention are tools in that effort - tools that now need to be as closely monitored and assessed as they were once recklessly abused.

He also links to Hilzoy, who has apparently read the actual executive orders, and who makes yet another crucial distinction - between "rendition," which is the practice of moving someone from one country to another, and may be extradition, which is normal, and "extraordinary rendition," which is essentially kidnapping.

With a policy like rendition, my standard is this: how would I feel if another country did something like this to a member of my family? If another country issued an arrest warrant for a member of my family, and they were arrested, charged with a crime, and transferred to that other country, I would be worried, but not panicked. Even if they are a member of my family, if they're guilty of something, they should be tried in a court of law.

But if a member of my family suddenly disappeared, and I had no idea where they were, then I would be panicked and terrified. And I would not want that to happen to anyone else. By that standard, we as a country should not do it to citizens of other countries. I have faith that Obama has the same standard. So far, that faith is confirmed.

Experience: Obama v. Palin

One of the rather more comical arguments floating around in defense of Sarah Palin for VP is that she has more "executive experience" than Barack Obama. The first time I heard this, I found it laughable. How could anyone say this with a straight face? While Obama was serving in the Illinois state legislature, Palin was Mayor of Wasila, Alaska, population 8,000 or so. I've lived in neighborhoods with more people (specifically, the East Village in NY). The man is a Senator. She's been governor of a state with a miniscule population for a grand total of a year and a half.

Nonetheless, the idea seems to be taking hold with some people. A couple of the bloggers at Obsidian take apart this nonsense. Hilzoy argues that Obama has done such a good running his campaign that we no longer have to wonder about how good of a manager he is - the answer is, he's a superb manager. Publius parses the difference between "executive" and "legislative" experience, and why Obama's experience is better.

I want to expand on these arguments. Allow me to propose a hypothetical. Suppose you are being sued, and you need a lawyer. You have two choices: one guy who has been a lawyer for 30 years, and a woman who has been a lawyer for 10 years. Going strictly on the "more experience is better" line, you would choose the old-timer.

Now suppose I told you that the guy with 30 years under his belt went to a small, obsucre law school, and has been a sole practitioner in a small town for his entire career. He's handled mostly divorces, contracts, wills, traffic tickets, the occasional DUI. The woman with only 10 years of experience, on the other hand, went to a top law school, worked as a federal prosecutor for 5 years, and then worked for one of the top law firms in the country as a litigator for 5 years. She's busted Mafia guys and defended large corporations. The older man likes to take off Friday afternoons for golf. The young woman routinely works 80 hour weeks, and is never without her BlackBerry. Now which one would you want as your lawyer?

When we talk about "experience," a big part of what we are talking about is who the person has dealt with. The small town lawyer deals with average people with fairly simple problems. The aggressive woman in the big city deals with other aggressive people, like the other lawyers she is arguing against, the judges, whoever she is prosecuting, whoever is suing her clients. She's dealing with large problems: rape, murder, theft, bribery, discrimination. Lives, reputations, and millions of dollars may be at stake for her.

Palin's formative political experience was on the city council and as mayor of Wasila, Alaska. Obama's formative political experience was as a state senator in Illinois. Palin would have been responsible for about 8,000 people; Obama was responsible for at least 200,000. Palin would have been dealing with other members of the city council, on issues like how to fill potholes and who to hire as police chief. Obama would have been dealing with multi-billion dollar budgets, and laws that affect 12 million people. He would have been dealing with the governor of one of the largest states in the country. He represented part of Chicago, a city famous for nasty and brutal politics.

In their current jobs, Palin is governor of a state with about 600,000 people. Obama represents all of those 12 million, or 20 times as many people. Palin has to deal with the Alaska state legislature. Obama has to deal with the President, 99 other senators, 435 members of the House, various parts of the executive branch, including the military, and powerful representatives of other countries. Obama votes on bills that affect all 300 million Americans; Palin signs or vetoes legislation that affects 1/500th of those 300 million.

And, of course, Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. I like to think that thinking and arguing about the Constitution is good preparation for being president. That probably make me an elitist.

Obama has dealt with larger issues, on a grander scale, with and against more demanding people, than Palin. Palin has won one statewide campaign, against a highly unpopular opponent. Obama has already won a successful primary campaign against a very tough opponent with substantial advantages, Hillary Clinton.

This idea that Palin has more experience than Obama is complete and utter nonsense.

Substance, Substance, Substance

Hilzoy, an excellent blogger at Obsidian Wings, has a great article about all of the obscure but important legislation that Barack Obama has sponsored in the Senate. I have to note one caveat about Hilzoy's analysis. She posted this a while ago. It's from October. October 2006. That was before the Democrats took back the Senate, and before Obama decided to run for President. She makes this point:

I have been surprised by how often Senator Obama turns up, sponsoring or co-sponsoring really good legislation on some topic that isn't wildly sexy, but does matter. His bills tend to have the following features: they are good and thoughtful bills that try to solve real problems; they are in general not terribly flashy; and they tend to focus on achieving solutions acceptable to all concerned, not by compromising on principle, but by genuinely trying to craft a solution that everyone can get behind.

And this is something that I hadn't thot of:

a lot of people are going on about how Obama has not sponsored legislation on any of the Vital Issues Of The Day. Personally, I think that he'd have to be delusional to introduce, say, his own solution to the health insurance crisis: no bill on such a topic introduced by a freshman senator from the minority party would have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding, and the only reason to introduce one would be to grandstand. For that reason, I think that his failure to do so tends to speak well of him.

So in his first year and a half in the Senate, Obama had already found a number things that he wanted to change. Most of them are the kind of issues that don't affect a lot of people, at least not at first, but are actually very important, and could become life-altering. Like Nonproliferation, which Hilzoy describes as "the poster child for issues that people ought to care about, but don't." Or avian flu. Or helping hospitals to develop programs for disclosure of medical errors.

This may be part of why people don't realize that Obama is actually a very substantive kind of guy. He is, in part, a policy wonk. But you don't get crowds riled up talking about regulating genetic testing. That stuff is really boring for about 99.9% of Americans. But that is the nuts and bolts of democracy.

I've read Hilzoy every now and then, but I am going to pay more attention to her blog from now on. Particularly since I just discovered that she is a professor of philosophy.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan