“The sudden disappointment of a hope leaves a scar which the ultimate fulfillment of that hope never entirely removes.”
                                                                                           -  Thomas Hardy

Robert Reich wrote on Monday on Salon.com, “People who voted for Barack Obama tend to fall into one of two camps: Trusters, who believe he’s a good man with the right values and he’s doing everything he can; and cynics, who have become disillusioned with his bailouts of Wall Street, flimsy proposals for taming the Street, willingness to give away 85 percent of cap-and-trade pollution permits, seeming reversals on eavesdropping and torture, and squishiness on a public option for healthcare.”

I would add a third camp – Aspiring Trusters.  This camp consists of those of us who want desperately to believe Obama is the good man with the right values for whom we thought we voted but are feeling disappointment, even betrayal, at some of the decisions he is making.  This is not the camp of those who simply are disappointed it is taking him longer than they expected to accomplish some items on his agenda; nor is it the camp of those who expected Obama to adopt a far Left approach to obliterating the remnants of the Bush administration.

It takes a long, long, long, long time to turn the Ship of State.  Anyone who expected Obama to “turn it on a dime” had unrealistic expectations, and any disappointment they feel is of their own making.  And those who expected a flaming liberal approach to governing were equally unrealistic because we are, in the final analysis, a nation of Centrists and cannot be governed effectively from either too far Right or too far Left.

But some of us are feeling that where Obama held out the promise of Hope, when it comes to Civil Liberties he has pulled the rug out from under those who bought into his promise.  Where we expected him to refute the incursions the Bush administration made into our Civil Liberties, he has continued, and even endorsed, many of the same transgressions enacted by the Bush/Cheney regime.  Where we expected him to restore the Rule of Law, especially with regards to the unlawfully incarcerated inmates of Guantánamo Bay, he has shrunk from overturning the Bush/Cheney Human Rights violations.  Where we expected him to relinquish the dictatorial powers that accrued to the Bush Whitehouse under the doctrine of Imperial Presidency, he has, himself, proceeded to exercise many of those same powers.

In his 21 May speech at the National Archives, where he first unveiled his “preventive detention” policy, Obama stated that brutal methods of interrogation “undermine the rule of law,” and that “my Administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime.” 

However, on Saturday, 27 June, Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn, writing in the Washington Post, stated “Obama administration officials, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay, are crafting language for an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.”

Such an order, should it happen, will abrogate the hopes of millions of Americans for the return of the Rule of Law and the abolishment of the Imperial Presidency.  Instead, we will be left looking forward to continued encroachments upon our Civil Liberties by a government that espouses the belief that any act, any policy, any dictate is permissible under the guise of “keeping Americans safe.”  The problem with this course is that it is not only morally reprehensible, it repudiates the basic tenet upon which our Nation was founded – the Rights of the Individual.

As Glenn Greenwald writes, “When one combines [the Obama administration's tendency to mimic the Bush on war on terror tactics] with the fact that Bush’s actions in the areas of civil liberties, Terrorism and secrecy were (at least ostensibly) central to the widespread anger about the Bush presidency, it’s impossible to understand how anyone whose objections over the last eight years were sincere (as opposed to a handy weapon opportunistically used to politically weaken Bush) could be supporting what Obama, in these areas, is doing now.”

It was virtually inevitable, given the near-hallucinogenic euphoria surrounding Obama’s election and inauguration, that many of us would sooner or later experience some manner of disappointment in the president’s performance.  But we still expected that, overall, he would be “a good man with the right values doing everything he can.”  We didn’t expect to feel betrayed on substantive matters on which he had stated an avowed opposition to the former administration.

Unfortunately, Obama’s Audacity of Hope seems to have morphed into a policy of taking the path of least resistance.  We can only hope our president finds the intestinal fortitude to steer away from the Dark Side.