The American Mind

We find another Sen. Obama adviser significantly disagreeing with the candidate. This time over FISA updating and telecom immunity:

In a new interview with National Journal magazine, an intelligence adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign broke with his candidate’s position opposing retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies being sued for cooperating with a dubious U.S. government domestic surveillance program.

“I do believe strongly that [telecoms] should be granted that immunity,” former CIA official John Brennan told National Journal reporter Shane Harris in the interview. “They were told to [cooperate] by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context.”

“I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that’s the right thing to do,” added Brennan, who is an intelligence and foreign policy adviser to Obama.

I’m sensing a pattern. That’s explained by an Obama spokesman:

Sen. Obama welcomes a variety of views, but his position on FISA is clear. He and Brennan differ.

Obama doesn’t mind people who disagree with him to advise him. I’m pleased he’s tried to pass along sensible advice like telecom immunity. That’s all well and good, but what happens if he gets elected President? He has to turn his campaign positions into policy. People in the Reagan administration coined the phrase “personnel is policy.” David Frum defined that as “if you want conservative policy, you had better go hire the smartest and toughest conservatives you can find to execute it.” Likewise if you want liberal policy. Forget all the talk about “post-partisanship.” Obama’s a liberal. Who’s going to implement his ideas? Can you imagine John Brennan fighting hard with Congressmen on telecom immunity? How about Austan Goolsbee on altering NAFTA?

It’s usually a safe assumption that campaign advisers become policy makers in the President’s administration. It’s a way voters can guess how a candidate would govern. In Obama’s case we don’t have a clue who will put meat on “hope’s” bones? Someone has to actually do the “changing.”

Michael Goldfarb comments,

The funny thing is that these advisers are all right. Obama’s in lala land making promises he can’t possibly keep and his advisers are just stating the obvious. Their guy has no experience (not an automatic disqualification for office), he isn’t going to pull troops out of Iraq (because that would be crazy), he isn’t going to withdraw from NAFTA (also crazy), and he isn’t going to let telecom companies go bankrupt because they did their patriotic duty.

Either Obama doesn’t mean what he says about NAFTA, an Iraq withdrawal, and telecom immunity or we’re clueless about who will staff his administration of change.

“Intel Adviser Breaks with Obama over FISA, Telecoms” [via memeorandum]

[picture via IowaPolitics.com]