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By Gregory Taggart, February 13, 2011 2:46 pm

Slate’s John Dickerson weighs in on Obama’s performance in the events leading up to Mubarak’s ouster, and he rips a page out of Thomas Friedman’s playbook.

As Dickerson writes in a piece titled Was Obama Too Indecisive on Egypt?
Or did his refusal to meddle actually speed Mubarak’s fall?,

Whether by design or dithering, U.S. policy makers didn’t get in the way of events in Cairo. That strategy appears to have been successful. That may mean that in a world where developments can move so quickly, TBD is the new SOP.

Dickerson’s piece is more nuanced than the conclusion, and he does take some shots at the administration’s handling of the crisis; nevertheless, he comes off as making excuses for the President’s handling of the matter. I just hope he didn’t feel a tingle running up his leg as events unfolded.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 13, 2011 2:21 pm

As I mention in the previous post, I wrote a number of posts about the constitutional crisis in Honduras in 2009, the U.S.’s response to it. I realized that I hadn’t followed what happened about the crises quieted down–or at least fell off my radar.

Here’s a quick update, beginning with then-President Micheletti’s July 27, 2009 letter to the Wall Street Journal, to sort of get you up to speed as to who he is and what happened in Honduras, at least according to him (and to me for that matter, since I agree with what he wrote).

The nut paragraph in that letter, for my purposes, is:

The way forward is to work with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. He is proposing ways to ensure that Mr. Zelaya complies with Honduras’s laws and its constitution and allows the people of Honduras to elect a new president in the regularly scheduled Nov. 29 elections (or perhaps earlier, if the date is moved up as President Arias has suggested and as Honduran law allows).(emphasis supplied)

Note the date on the letter. The so-called coup took place one month earlier on June 28, 2009. So just one month latter, President Micheletti is talking about regularly scheduled elections where the people can elect a new president.

According to The Economist, that happened as scheduled, when centre-right candidate Porfirio Lobo Sosa won the election. Later reports confirmed that he won 55% of the vote. Turnout was “robust,” rivaling turnouts in U.S. elections. As The Economist wrote on December 3, 2009,

On November 29th the de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti achieved its main aim of holding a presidential election to choose Mr Zelaya’s successor. All five political parties took part, including the far-left Democratic Unification party, which reneged on a promise to withdraw if Mr Zelaya was not reinstated. Despite warnings of violent protests and a call to boycott the election by Mr Zelaya’s “resistance” movement, voting took place fairly calmly, disturbed only by one clash between police and demonstrators in San Pedro Sula, the country’s second city.

Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo, the amiable leader of the centre-right National Party, won a clear mandate with 55% of the vote—primarily because the rival Liberal Party was divided between backers of Mr Micheletti and Mr Zelaya. Turnout seems to have been around the 55% mark reached in the 2005 election, when Mr Zelaya narrowly beat Mr Lobo.

I reviewed that to write this: On December 9, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking at the First Diplomacy Briefing Series Meeting in Washington D.C. said the following about the election:

Now, the culmination of what was a year-long electoral process occurred on November 29th when the Honduran people expressed their feelings and their commitment to a democratic future. They turned out in large numbers and they threw out, in effect, the party of both President Zelaya and the de facto leader, Mr. Micheletti. Since then, President-elect Lobo has launched a national dialogue. He’s called for the formation of a national unity government and a truth commission as set forth among the requirements in the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord. That is an agreement that the Hondurans themselves reached. We helped to facilitate it, but the Hondurans decided they wanted a local resolution. (emphasis supplied)

I find her choice of words–threw out, in effect–weaselly. Taking Micheletti at his word, he was pushing for elections from almost the very beginning. In fact, the elections that did occur were regularly scheduled. To me the U.S. got in the way from the very beginning. I think the Honduran people in general and the Honduran government in particular acted very much like a mature democracy. They should be proud.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 13, 2011 1:38 pm

Summer 2009, I wrote a series of posts about the coup (or not to coup) in Honduras. I’ve kind of lost track of whether the Obama administration finally declared that what happened down there was a coup or not.

That said, I have not forgotten that the administration opposed what happened and actively campaigned for the return of Manuel Zelaya to power, even though that country’s Congress and Supreme Court approved his approval. In short, what appeared, at least to me, to be a constitutional transfer of power by constitutionally constituted bodies–a transfer necessitated by the fear that Zelaya was attempting to become the region’s next Chavez–was some sort of coup to our administration.

With this in mind, consider the news of the last few days out of Egypt: Mubarak surrendered power to the Egyptian military, which today dissolved parliament, suspended the nation’s constitution, and promised elections in 6 months–in what The New York Times reports the military called “a democratic transition.”

Now I support what is happening in Egypt. It appears at this point that the military is acting in harmony with the public’s will, justifying, in the military’s mind at least, its claim of a democratic transition. What I’m waiting for now is for the Obama administration to call this a coup.

What? They’re not going to do that?

Then why all the fuss over Honduras, where a democratically elected congress and the supreme court transferred power?

Critics of the Obama administration have questioned why he didn’t offer similar support for those who protested in Iran in 2009-2010. They should add Honduras to the list of inconsistencies.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 11, 2011 9:35 pm

Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers writes,

The Obama administration’s Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.

That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.

Critics say the legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that were supposed to have been stopped in 2006.

The controversy over the telephone records is a legacy of the Bush administration’s war on terror. Critics say the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.

I’ll go with the meme: Change? I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about this.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 11, 2011 4:14 pm

Thomas Friedman offers some hopeful comments on Egypt in general and to those who suffer at the hands of “a lot of worried kings and autocrats . . . from North Africa to Burma to Beijing.” And, he continues,

it is not simply because a dictator has been brought down by his people. That has happened before. It is because the way it was done is so easy to emulate. What made this Egyptian democracy movement so powerful is its legitimacy.

It was started by youth and enabled by Facebook and Twitter. It was completely non-violent and only resorted to stone-throwing when faced with attacks by regime thugs. It drew on every segment of the Egyptian population. There was a huge flag in Tahrir Square today with a Muslim crescent moon and a Christian cross inside it. And most of all, it had no outside help.

Now, I agree with Friedman. And I, too, am hopeful. But I was hopeful for Iraq, and I’m worried that experiment tells us too much about what might happen in Egypt after the jubilation subsides and the work begins. Nevertheless, today I’m hopeful.

That said, I didn’t come to Friedman’s column expecting to agree with him. I came expecting to find something Friedmanesque. I was not disappointed. Immediately after the paragraphs I just quoted, Mr.Friedman lets loose this little gem of a paragraph:

In some ways, President Barack Obama did the Egyptian revolution a great favor by never fully endorsing it and never even getting his act together for how to deal with it. This meant in the end that Egyptians know they did this for themselves by themselves – with nothing but their own willpower, unity and creativity.

It’s good to know that some continue to think that our President Walks on water even when he’s in over his head.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 11, 2011 10:01 am

And cedes power to the military. My wife thinks chaos will ensue. I’m more hopeful. Let’s pray I’m right, for Egypt’s sake. For Israel’s.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 10, 2011 8:58 am

Is the time ripe for a Mormon to be President, or will religion get in Mitt Romney’s or Jon Huntsman Jr.’s way? Sally Quinn asks the question in On Belief, her religious bailiwick at The Washington Post. Eight panelists, including the likes of Barry Lynn who writes,

There really is only one question that needs to be answered: can you faithfully execute the laws of the United States or is there some religious view you hold that you believe transcends that duty?

Which begs the question: Would he, or anyone else, accept the answer, “Yes, I can,” and move on? Or would that question actually be an open door through which the inquisitor would parade his even deeper-held beliefs that “there ain’t no way a Mormon President won’t do the bidding of his (or her) hierarchical superiors in Salt Lake!”

I’ll be back for further comment on this subject.

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By Gregory Taggart, February 7, 2011 12:00 pm

Adam Liptak struggles to find a distinction between corporations in general and the so-called institutional media (which are usually corporations) in particular, in his piece on Citizens United and campaign finance reform. Of course, the is no distinction, or there shouldn’t be.

But that’s beside the point, the point at which the government lost the case. Liptak hints at it in his story when he writes,

Consider this telling exchange between Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and a lawyer for the Obama administration at the first of two arguments in Citizens United. The lawyer, Malcolm L. Stewart, said Congress had the power to regulate corporate speech about political candidates under the First Amendment.

“Most publishers are corporations,” Justice Alito said. “And a publisher that is a corporation could be prohibited from selling a book?”

It was a hypothetical question, but it cut to the core of the meaning of the press clause of the First Amendment. There was a lot of back and forth, and other justices jumped in. In the end, though, Mr. Stewart gave a candid answer.

“We could prohibit the publication of the book,” he said.

But Stewart was not talking about just any book with his answer. No, he was responding to a very specific question about a very specific kind of book.

I was out for a run and listening on my MP3 player to the exchange between Stewart and various Justices on this point (courtesy of the Oyez Project), and I remember saying to myself, “he [Stewart] just lost this case.” And this is where he lost it:

Justice Roberts: If it’s a 500-page book, and at the end it says, and so vote for X, the government could ban that?

Mr. Stewart: Well, if it says vote for X, it would be express advocacy and it would be covered by pre-existing Federal Election Campaign act provisions . . . we could prohibit the publication of the book using corporate treasury funds.

So, did you get that? One request that you vote for candidate X, at the end of a very long book, and zippo facto manulo, the government could ban that 500-page book published by a corporation under pre-Citizens United law, at least according to the government in the first oral argument. No wonder the Court ruled the way it did. No wonder, at least to me.

Liptak is right, however. The government backed away from that argument in reargument. Solicitor General Elena Kagan argued the case this time around, and she went nowhere near Stewart’s bold claim. But the damage was done, and in my view, the case had already been lost because, fortunately, five Justices couldn’t see their way clear to ban a 500-page book because of one pitch at the very end, a simple plea to “vote for X.”

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By Gregory Taggart, February 6, 2011 1:24 pm

Where’s a friend, when you need a someone to bash Republicans. Civility being the rage and all in the United States, you go to Egypt, which is what New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof did when he reached out to “an old friend in Cairo” to reassure him that Egypt would not fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood if Mubarak exited stage right. That woman,

a woman with Western tastes that include an occasional glass of whiskey, . . . thought for a moment and said: “Yes, possibly. But, from my point of view, in America the Republican Party is bad for peace as well.”

But don’t stop there Nick, go for the throat–in your very next sentence,

If democracy gains in the Middle East, there will be some demagogues, nationalists and jingoists, just as there are in America and Israel, and they may make diplomacy more complicated.

I think this is what is called a tri-fecta: 1.) use a mouthpiece to bash your least favorite political party, 2.) make sure that bashing includes equating the Republican party with the Muslim Brotherhood, 3.) then make sure to chime in that there are “demagogues, nationalists, and jingoists” in American, just like those horrible Muslim Brotherhood guys who are busy making “diplomacy more difficult” (for the anointed one, I suppose).

Whatever.

Update: Stumbled upon this post by David Pryce-Jones, Anyone Here Been Raped & Speaks English? a post named after the book of the same title. Seemed an appropriate addendum.