Greg Weiner

by Greg Weiner

Sunday’s New York Times carries a less than astonishing report, following the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s hearings on John O. Brennan’s nomination to be Director of Central Intelligence, that President Obama’s terrorism policies have turned out to be remarkably similar to his predecessor’s. “Obama’s Turn,” the headline runs, “in Bush’s Bind.” Bind? The suggestion is that circumstances compel the policies—a variation on the narrative, as George W. Carey has suggested with a tinge of doubt, that presidents with access to a purported black box of secrets unknown and unknowable to mortals understand the need for security policies whose urgency the rest of us are in no position to evaluate.This makes for a compelling plotline, but William of Occam might be able to identify a simpler one: namely, power. That thesis wields considerable predictive and explanatory capacity. Presidents want power, maintain it, try to expand it. Which news is not going to make the front page of The Times. The problem is that in the age of terrorism, no one seems inclined anymore to resist them—and that is very much worthy of notice. [Read more...]