The Politics Of Domestic Spying

A quick word on the politics behind the revelation of President's Bush's authorization of unwarranted domestic spying...

I'm not going to get into the legality/extralegality of this issue...I'll leave that to the "experts." When there is a special secret court within the Justice Department with the specific purpose of issuing warrants for domestic wiretapping, it does seen suspicious (to say the least) that the President would deliberately circumvent this process. But lets talk about the politics behind the upcoming battle over this domestic spying program:

First, on Saturday the President offered a strong and fairly compelling defense of his authorization of domestic spying. Simply put, this is really his only option. If he's learned nothing else from the Plamegate fiasco, its that repeatedly saying "there's an ongoing investigation" and therefore the White House has "no comment" only hastens the fall of his approval ratings and undermines what little political capital he has left. His approval ratings seem to have turned the corner and he cannot afford to get bogged down in damage control and a 'no comment' policy. Instead of dancing around the issue, he has attacked it head on, admitting he authorized the spying at least 30 times since 9/11 and proclaiming that he continues to do so for the remainder of his presidency. As he did with remarkable success during both his presidential campaigns, he has claimed ownership of the issues and now has the ability to define them as he pleases. If the president is successful, which I think he may be, it will not be a debate over the legality of his decision; rather it will be a choice between the best national security that he can provide vs. sissy liberal civil liberties complaints. The White House (yes, probably Rove and company) is banking on the fact that the American people will choose national security over civil liberties every time. I expect the Democrats to run, full speed ahead, into this trap; they will once again be painted with the 'weak on defense' brush.

One last point: I get the sense that President Bush is PISSED about the fact that this information was leaked. Do I think that he truly cares about civil liberties? I don't know - he certainly doesn't care as much as he claims to publicly. However, no president should have to deal with such highly sensitive things leaking to the media. He should be careful, though, not to develop a Nixon-like paranoia about such things. Let's sit back and watch this one play out...it's going to be fun to watch.

UPDATE (12/18/05 - 8:58PM): This WaPo story relates Friday's NY Times revelation to the pseudo-fillibuster of The PATRIOT ACT renewal: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121701113.html?nav=hcmodule