Two Speeches
by Jeffrey Toobin
The New Yorker
June 1, 2009
It’s tempting to see last week’s speech-making duel between Barack Obama and Dick Cheney as a mismatch, with the eloquence of the admired incumbent set against the snarl of the discredited predecessor. Certainly, there was no contest in terms of political stagecraft. Obama appeared in the hushed rotunda of the National Archives, in front of the documents that embody the highest aspirations of American government, while Cheney found a secure location at a right-wing think tank, one of a handful of places in the country where he could be assured a friendly audience.
But the popularity of the messengers should not be confused with the popularity of their messages. Obama’s speech came toward the end of a rough week for one of his signature issues—the return of the rule of law in the war on terror. Obama ran for President on a promise to close the government’s notorious detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in the first week of his new Administration he directed that it be shuttered and its inmates released or dispersed to other locations by January, 2010. While he was figuring out the details of that process, he suffered a political ambush in the Senate, which voted ninety to six to deny his request for eighty million dollars to shut down the prison, and, furthermore, voted to forbid that any inmates be transferred anywhere within the United States. Even by congressional standards, this was a cynical maneuver, since many of those voting aye had earlier supported the prison’s closure. Where, one wonders, did the legislators think the Guantánamo alumni were going to be sent?
This question has confounded lawmakers ever since the Bush Administration came up with the misbegotten idea to open Guantánamo in early 2002. In a series of landmark cases before the Supreme Court, in 2004, 2006, and 2008, the Justices courageously repudiated the Bush Administration’s attempts to deny basic rights to the Guantánamo prisoners, and, in so doing, gave the new Administration a road map of sorts about how an honorable detention system might be devised. The core of Obama’s speech was an attempt to describe how he would solve a problem that proved well beyond the capabilities—moral as well as legal—of the Bush Administration.
(More here.)
The New Yorker
June 1, 2009
It’s tempting to see last week’s speech-making duel between Barack Obama and Dick Cheney as a mismatch, with the eloquence of the admired incumbent set against the snarl of the discredited predecessor. Certainly, there was no contest in terms of political stagecraft. Obama appeared in the hushed rotunda of the National Archives, in front of the documents that embody the highest aspirations of American government, while Cheney found a secure location at a right-wing think tank, one of a handful of places in the country where he could be assured a friendly audience.
But the popularity of the messengers should not be confused with the popularity of their messages. Obama’s speech came toward the end of a rough week for one of his signature issues—the return of the rule of law in the war on terror. Obama ran for President on a promise to close the government’s notorious detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in the first week of his new Administration he directed that it be shuttered and its inmates released or dispersed to other locations by January, 2010. While he was figuring out the details of that process, he suffered a political ambush in the Senate, which voted ninety to six to deny his request for eighty million dollars to shut down the prison, and, furthermore, voted to forbid that any inmates be transferred anywhere within the United States. Even by congressional standards, this was a cynical maneuver, since many of those voting aye had earlier supported the prison’s closure. Where, one wonders, did the legislators think the Guantánamo alumni were going to be sent?
This question has confounded lawmakers ever since the Bush Administration came up with the misbegotten idea to open Guantánamo in early 2002. In a series of landmark cases before the Supreme Court, in 2004, 2006, and 2008, the Justices courageously repudiated the Bush Administration’s attempts to deny basic rights to the Guantánamo prisoners, and, in so doing, gave the new Administration a road map of sorts about how an honorable detention system might be devised. The core of Obama’s speech was an attempt to describe how he would solve a problem that proved well beyond the capabilities—moral as well as legal—of the Bush Administration.
(More here.)
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