Obama Cross the Border

McCain was up in Canada yesterday, apparently trailing streams of gaffes. He opposed Obama’s support of a windfall profits tax on oil companies, although he himself had previously supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies. Perhaps the ultimate issue of perspective. He was here on a 6-hour trip to speak to the Economic Club back in Toronto. I hope they didn’t charge much for the speech given that McCain himself has said that he has never been much interested in economics. Perhaps he was in Canada looking for advice.

My Canadian friends and neighbors never ask me about McCain, though they regularly ask about Obama. I don’t know what to say. They obviously care a great deal about who is the president in the U.S. and the people I know, at least, are deeply unhappy with what the Bush administration has brought, so what they are really asking me is, ‘Can Obama win?’ He’s getting good press, I think, because the Canadians are very well-disposed to him although they usually don’t know much about any specific policy issues other than that he is opposed to the war. Of course, I’m not much better off because it hasn’t been all that clear to anyone what his policy positions are except that he is opposed to the war.

Now that he's the apparent nominee, of course, we’ve learned a few things. He’s a big supporter of maintaining the feckless embargo on Cuba, the evil empire to the south. And there appears to be no support for Israel that he wouldn’t be immediately prepared to offer. Today, he said that ‘there was no doubt that Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed an extraordinary threat to the U.S., and the United States is always justified in making decisions that will provide for its security.’ No, wait a minute, that was George W. Bush who said that, back in 2003. What Obama said today was, "And so there is no doubt that Iran poses an extraordinary threat to Israel and Israel is always justified in making decisions that will provide for its security."

Then, yesterday, he announced his support for the ‘compromise’ on the FISA bill which permits the government to spy on Americans, and, additionally, gives the big telecom companies retroactive immunity from any legal actions for previously spying on Americans as long as the administration told them in writing that it was legal.

This is a big issue for those on the left in the U.S. and, I would think, a big issue for libertarians of any stripe. Using the power of government to invade citizen privacy without due process of law is one of the very big threats to that freedom and liberty that those in power are always carrying on about. The telecoms, who are being sued for this violation (admittedly committed at the urging of the Bush administration) want to be taken off the hook because ‘they were just following orders.’ Didn’t we get rid of that defense at Nuremberg? And here we have Obama, who says he isn’t in favor of retroactive immunity for the telecoms but nevertheless supports the bill that includes it.

So what am I supposed to tell the Canadians about Obama? I don’t even know what I’m supposed to tell myself about Obama.