Sorry, Krystal Ball --We Should Hold All Presidents to the Same Standards
I've been listening to the talking heads on the right rant and rave all week that Democrats are hypocrites because they didn't speak up about this drone program from the Obama administration, and that is somehow equal to George W. Bush sanctioning torture. That if everyone is not equally outraged and calling for accountability or impeachment, they should just shut up because they're just partisans who don't really care about any of this if it means speaking out against their own party.
Examples like this one aren't helping the cause any. As Digby noted, we had Fox on the attack, quoting John Yoo and calling the Obama administration hypocrites, and then we were treated to Krystal Ball proving their point:
Today's Fox News Special Report showed footage of Candidate Obama in 2008 hotly condemning the Bush administration's extra-judicial terrorism policies and then the "all-stars" debated whether President Obama and all his supporters are hypocrites. It's hard to argue that there isn't some serious hypocrisy going on here. Unless you are Stephen "those WMD are there somewhere I swear it" Hayes who insisted that he is not a hypocrite, he's nothing but a pansy who's letting terrorists run free, I tell you, free! Everyone nodded solemnly. [...]
Meanwhile on MSNBC, Krystal Ball proves their point. She starts off saying that she's mostly "ok" with the drone program but thinks it needs more transparency and oversight. And then she discusses what really bothers her about the debate: the idea that we should have the same standards for all presidents. No, I'm not kidding:
Look, I voted for President Obama because I trust his values and his judgment and I believe his is a fundamentally responsible actor. Without gratuitously slamming ex-president Bush, I think he displayed extraordinary lapses in judgement in executing his primary responsibility as commander in chief and put troops in harms way imprudently.
President Obama would have exercised better judgment and he has exercised better judgment. The way it stands now the drone program is exclusively within the domain of the Executive. Their protocol, their judgement. So yeah, I feel a whole lot better about the program when the decider, so to speak, is President Obama. That's not to say that again the process shouldn't be codified, that there shouldn't be oversight.
