I Get Worried

Last Friday President Obama surprised a lot of people with a decision to restart the Bush-era military tribunals for terror suspects. This was such a big shift in his position that it was a shock to the system. He had been vehemently against these. Absolute in his condemnation of them less than a year ago. Yet here he was re-instituting them, although with supposedly better safeguards that keep them within American values.

My immediate reaction was, "Well, that's a typical politician, even one who appears to be so straightforward." I wondered what the political payoff was for this- a way of getting the GOP to support something he was doing? Forty plus years of political cynicism and suspicion doesn't disappear in a few months. So admittedly that worried me.

Then I switched sides, sort of, and wondered, "What does Obama know now that he didn't know a year ago that would cause him to do such a significant shift on what looks like a clear case of legal process and civil liberties?"

That's when I got worried.

I realize that a candidate for office is often stating a "pure" vision of his positions and beliefs. I also realize that the facts of life in the real world are never close to that ideal. There is always information that is Top Secret and should remain that even a candidate for President doesn't need to know before he or she is elected.

Does Obama now know something so big or important and secret that he refines his opinion? Are there big issues out there in the big, wider world that take precedence on these types of decisions? That's what scares me. Is there a point we may reach where the values and principles and core beliefs on which the United States rests will not keep us safe and does Obama know that?

Personally, I don't think that is where we are. Rather I think we are seeing the President for what he has always been- a politician. Yes, I believe he is an honest and a man of integrity. I believe he stands for the best we are and can be as a nation, including civil and human rights. But in the end he is the President. And that will no doubt lead him to things that are difficult.

I agree with Bob Carlton at The Corner. Reflecting on this very issue he commented:

I voted for Obama as a politician, but to be brutally honest, I hoped for Obama as an activist. I hoped for more - and like any politician, Obama governs like a politician, not an activist.

I pray that more of what many of us were hoping for will overcome the political things that may be less than we can be. I pray that Mr. Obama will be able to hold to his stated principles and not be tempted to give in to less than what he wants. Only time will tell, and we are still very early in this administration. I haven't lost hope.

But there are many times when I am worried.