Glenn Greenwald’s Mitt Romney Surrogacy

[Jim Lane]

11. Obama is better than Romney but that doesn't mean all criticism must be on hold for five months.

Obama is, first and foremost, a politician. Between now and November he'll be subject to the temptation to move to the right, because that's how campaign-manager types think you appeal to independents. To many of the people giving him advice, policy has no moral dimension at all; it's strictly a question of what will be most advantageous politically.

It's essential, therefore, that the left not give Obama a complete free pass. When he is meeting with those political advisors, and they tell him that a particular lurch to the right would appeal to some swing voters, we want someone at that meeting -- another advisor or maybe even Obama himself -- to say, "But it would cost me some support from my base, from the people who are staffing the phone banks and knocking on doors and sending $25 and $50 checks." We have to hope that, at least some of the time, the purely utilitarian political calculus will call for moving in a progressive direction, or at least not emulating the Republicans.

Of course, that's on top of hoping that a leader will sometimes do the right thing even when it's not politically advantageous. No matter how confident you are that a leader will do that, it certainly can't hurt to add some political pressure.

I plan to vote for Obama. I hope to see him re-elected. I also hope to see him called to task whenever he does something wrong. Greenwald, as a pundit, is helping to keep these issues alive, and I applaud him for it.