I distrust Palin and her ilk as much as the next Northeastern-born Jewish guy, but this is just silly. Her campaign has literally hundreds of millions of dollars to spend, so of course they are willing to part with some of that money to make her look as fantastic as they can. Buying fancy clothes with money donated by one's most devoted supporters in order to look one's best when one speaks to them does not have any bearing on one's ability to assume the role of Chief Executive. The amount of money spent may seem enormous, but it's a pittance compared with the volume of cash being spent on robocalls suggesting that "B. Hussein Obama" wants to blow up the Pentagon. What the clothing budget really highlights is how generally wasteful, ridiculous, and wildly over-the-top presidential politicking has become over the last decade.

Hi Glenn--

Being a scientifically oriented fellow, I really appreciate your use of polling data when discussing public opinion, instead of the usual convenient crystal ball juju. It's nice to know that our countrymen largely stand beside us on so many of the important Constitutional issues of the day, especially when the Broder's and Gergen's and certainly the O'Reilly's of the television circus are saying differently every evening. But for all that, I think you may be oversimplifying the issue when you state that making a political choice which is popular with a plurality of Americans is necessarily or even usually synonymous with making a politically expedient decision. Of course, there is often an obvious conflict between public opinion and the goals of those who provide serious firepower to political operatives (see AIPAC, et al.), but I think there is also another, less insidious reason that the favor of the public at large does not an easy political decision make.

In short, even though a large fraction of the population supports investigations into Bush and company's admitted war crimes, as well as an end to the torture regime, there may not necessarily be a political benefit (at least not in the short-term) to doing what is popular (and right) on these issues because of the dichotomous nature of modern America politics. We have no more Whigs or Know-Nothings to hit the two major parties from unpredictable angles. Obama knows he will never be outflanked on his left by Republican contemporaries, nor will he be challenged significantly by his own sycophantic and corrupt party leadership since they are fairly conservative (in the Bush-Cheney sense of the word) on national security issues.

If Obama takes bold action on issues of terror and caters to "the Left" (as well as, I hope, to his own conscience) he will doubtless be supported by pluralities or even majorities of Americans in most of his decisions regarding those issues. However, it would be unreasonable not to acknowledge the political danger that remains even though "liberal" views on War on Terror are popular right now. The high road on civil liberties is treacherous even when that road is tread by most Americans because only those who walk on the low road(i.e. torture fetishists etc.) have a viable alternative. If Obama fails to change 80% of Bush's anti-terror regimen, leaving nearly all of the most egregious parts in place, I think he will lose very little hard support versus Republican Candidate X because his left-of-center supporters have nowhere to turn (or at least I feel this is so, since third-party candidates are non-starters at present). On the other hand, he stands to pick up support from the minority group by leaving the current policies essentially intact.

Ending on a hopeful note, I think that three points are worth reiterating which run counter to my depressing screed here. For one, Obama's swift actions so far lead me to believe he may have plans in place to address the War on Terror head on without thinking overly much about the politics of it, which would be fantastic for obvious reasons. I also think that the rise of organizations such as Accountability Now may lead to very clear and present pressure from the left side on Democratic politicians, forcing them to align their votes more closely with the plurality view on national security and civil liberties questions. Most importantly, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as Glenn Greenwald after him: Real leaders don't search for concensus; real leaders create concensus. If Obama is passionate about change on these issues, and if he expresses that passion to the public in a straightforward and eloquent way with the backing of serious policy prescriptions, I think members of the minority populace which supports torture and such may come around to his (our?) side with surprising speed.

Thanks for reading. Oh and thanks for writing, of course.

Activists and pundits from all sides find it convenient to ignore legal issues such as the one you discuss because to consider the law is to place restrictions on one's brilliant and wonky proposals. If a man said, at a town hall meeting, "In response to the recent rash of burglaries in our town, we should form a commission to investigate the extent to which stealing objects from a residence can be considered criminal, and to help us, anyone involved in the burglaries may step forward now and receive immunity," he would be run out of town on a rail. This is because everyone knows that burglary is illegal, and everyone knows that the remedy for a string of burglaries is to catch the burglars, investigate their crimes, and prosecute them if evidence or their misdeeds is abundant enough. By ignoring the likely criminality of what the Bush team (et alia) has done, the pundit class is free to ignore the reality that there is only one solution, and can instead put out plenty of copy (or airtime) devoted to discussion of something we stopped having when we codified a law against torture: options.