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Comment by TeMPOraL | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. In theory he has enough power, but if you look at how the whole system works, you don't get to become a president if you aren't a) owing a lot of people favours, and b) a kind of person that would be disruptive. If you're the uncontrollable type that would pose the risk to the status quo, you won't be allowed to rise high enough to become a president.

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Except this is Obama at the peak of his hope and change moment, he'd just been comprehensively elected as an alternative to the Bush years. This was the perfect opportunity to essentially blame even more things on Bush and even cement his position, this was an opportunity to bury the GOP if he had broken this news. Ironically he was in a position to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize if he had taken action against this, Guantanamo and the CIA torture programme.

Obama didn't have infinite political capital. We was dealing with some pretty heavy things in the aftermath of the stock market crash - stuff that was potentially alienating his own base, while also trying to push through his own legacy change (Obamacare). All of this through his peak popularity. If he had tried to squash the wiretapping then, it likely would have overextended him and saw his health care reforms squashed.

I guess maybe this is an unreasonable comment I'm going to make, but:

Yeah, Obama was low on political capital because he shot most of his wad at Obamacare, which didn't get as far as he wanted it, meaning that he loses political capital for losing relative to his goals. In this weak position, the thing to do is rally more political capital from the base... which he never did.

Didn't he stop the torture program?

But that's as far as he went. He's hardly been shouting from the rafters about how America should not be a country which tortures, and especially in the light of the Congressional findings re the CIA's activities I'm amazed there haven't been prosecutions. Honestly McCain, on this particular issue, would have been a better president.

Were there any smoking guns in the Congressional report? I don't recall any, but I didn't read the whole thing or look too much into it at the time.

I also don't think we should retroactively punish behavior that they thought was legal and proper at the time. That seems like a bad precedent.

'The CIA "provided inaccurate information to the White House, Congress, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media and the American public" about the "brutal" interrogation techniques it used on terrorism suspects, a long-held Senate intelligence committee report finds.' http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/12/09/369562383/...

"I was just following orders" didn't cut it at Nuremberg either. The courts should have been allowed to test whether what they were doing was illegal or not, if it was legal then it is "just" a moral stain on the soul of America.

A Nazi comparison? Really? You think people who tortured terrorists because they believed (even if you don't) it would prevent more attacks are in the same reference class as people who tortured and killed innocent people for far less noble reasons?

Yep - during a time of war people are torturing prisoners, sometimes to death. We executed people for that. People who said they thought what they were doing was justified and / or legal.

I'm sorry but the CIA torturers are war criminals, it doesn't matter about the relative aspect of it - there absolutes.

For the sake of a few thousand people, a fraction of those killed in gun violence for instance, the USA sacrificed any claim to moral superiority and probably created many more terrorists than were ever stopped. Home of the brave indeed. I'm British, in the military and a massive ally of the USA, but on this issue the lack of contrition exhibited is shameful.

He stopped the prosecution of torturers. Don't give him credit where a coverup was intended.

That is a very absurd argument, one I have heard several times in liberal circles. President of United States of America is the most powerful man in the world. He doesn't owe anyone anything. We elect him thinking he will do what he promised and the only retribution for him is that he will either be impeached or not get re-elected.

That's it. That is democracy. Unless he had 'an offer he could not refuse', he is guilty of a lot of betrayal (apart from crimes he can commit from a presidential position).

He is not there to do physics, he has been given power to explicitly do what cannot be done without power. Apologetic my ass.

> We elect him

Out of how many candidates were you selecting? 300 million? Or just a few, with long political careers? You don't get to the point of being an actually electable candidate if you could stir up a real mess within the establishment.

The entire political process is a vetting system to weed out the unreliables and the ones who won't play by the rules.

Also, I have an inkling that the system is a sociopath pass filter; at any level of government the candidate who is slightly more immoral has improved chances. After a few iterations we have power lusting vampires in charge (the Cheneys, Clintons, ect.)

> He doesn't owe anyone anything

Candidates can and almost all do take an unlimited amount of money from private donors to fund their campaigns, likely in exchange for favourable legislation. Obama gathered $1072.6m like this in 2012. Obama owes his donors big time I would say.

If he's selling a service to them, yes.

See, I get that. He got a lot of money. But still he doesn't owe them anything. What is going to happen to him if he doesn't deliver to people who paid him that much money? Is he going to get assassinated? Is he going to have legal troubles? As a president he has the option to bypass large chunks of constitution, which in fact is the actual problem here. He is literally above the law.

Well, if he starts the custom of not delivering upon his promises to donors, I could image that the next democratic candidate would have a very hard time finding donors. So I guess the pressure from the party would be very big not to go there.

Which means it will be up to the general populace to ensure the small guy wins. And Obama as a person doesn't believe that.

Now that is the real question here. We as people do not think surveillance is bad. We clap for Batman and worry about Jack Bauer. That is the real insight here.

Jack Bauer maybe not, but I sure as hell would like to see S.H.I.E.L.D.

You did not elect Obama. The major news networks, in combination with the major holders of political and economic powers, did - by allowing you to be aware of a few handpicked candidates, and regulating the stories spinned around them.

If they did not want Obama in office, you would not even have seen his name anywhere on screen or in print.

Democracy in its true form has never existed in history as it is not really sustainable for many kinds of reasons, that all lead to disasters (people tend to vote for what is only good for them short-term leading to long-term losses, too many different groups arguing over X and Y and Z leading to stand-stills, etc).

I'm not saying we have it good right now, but it was for a while (last 150 years). But nothing lasts forever and eventually all systems decline and collapse.

Your 3rd and 4th paragraph are a very poor excuse for this undemocratic system. Other countries are doing much better. But attitudes like this won't get you there.

This is pretty much verbatim the "Green Lantern" theory of the presidency, fwiw.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/30...

Green Lantern theory says president should have sway over Congress. That is not the issue here.

No, the Green Lantern theory is basically that the public believes the President can do anything and everything he wants, and therefore can follow up on all of their campaign promises.

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