The importance of "intellectual vigor"

As you might have already seen, Colin Powell has given an as eloquent an endorsement of Obama as ever you'll find:



One thing I find very interesting is Powell's emphasis on Obama's intellect: his "intellectual curiosity", his "intellectual vigor". Powell cites these things as key because he knows, more than most, that a President that lacks these qualities is one who can be easily manipulated by a small cadre of advisers with sufficient presidential access. This is, in fact, precisely what occurred in the Bush White House during his tenure as Secretary of State.

Let me relate to you an excerpt from the (excellent) book I'm reading, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, and you'll have an idea of what I mean:

Afghanistan, like the United States, had signed the Geneva Conventions, but the President's lawyers argued that this was of no conern because the country was now a "failed state".

...

At the State Department, Powell and his legal adviser, William Howard Taft IV [!], fought a rear-guard action against Bush's lawyers and lost. This fierce fight took place almost entirely outside the public's view. In a confidential forty-page memo to [Office of Legal Council lawyer] John Yoo dated January 11, 2002, Taft argued that Yoo's analysis was "seriously flawed." Taft told Yoo that his contention that the President could disregard the Geneva Conventions was "untenable", "incorrect", and "confused." Taft disputed Yoo's argument that Afghanistan, as a "failed state", was not covered by the Conventions. "The official United States position before, during, and after the emergence of the Taliban was that Afghanistan constituted a state," he wrote. Taft also warned Yoo that if the United States took the war on terror outside the Geneva Conventions, not only could U.S. soldiers be denied the protections of the Conventions--and therefore be prosecuted for crimes, including murder--but President Bush could be accused of a "grave breach" by other countries, which would mean he could be prosecuted for war crimes.

...

Taft sent a copy of his memo to [Alberto] Gonzales, hoping that his dissent would reach the President. Within days, Yoo sent Taft a lengthy rebuttal.

...

But Taft's access to the President was no match for that of Cheney, who, as an administration source put it, "always got both the first and last bite of the apple." It remains unclear, in fact, whether anyone ever fully explained the countervailing arguments to President Bush before he signed off on the plan. According to top State Department officials, Bush decided to nullify the Geneva Conventions on January 8, 2002. This was three days before Taft sent his memo to Yoo. Evidently, the State Department was too far out the loop to catch up. [Emphasis mine.]

...

After losing the battle to uphold the Geneva Conventions, Powell concluded that Bush was not stupid but was easily manipulated. A confidant said that Powell thought it was easy to play on Bush's wish to be seen as doing the tough thing and making the "hard" choice. "He has these cowboy characteristics, and when you know where to rub him, you can really get him to do some dumb things. You have to play on those swaggering bits of his self-image. Cheney knew exactly how to push all his buttons," Powell confided to a friend.

Colonel Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, was more scathing. "You can slip a lot of crap over on someone who doesn't read a lot or pay attention to the details if you have no scruples," he said.

[Mayer, Jane. The Dark Side, pp. 122-125.]

So what happened is George W. Bush was given some very radical and unsound advice from a select group of advisers--Dick Cheney, John Yoo, and a few others--and acted on this advice before even seriously entertaining any dissenting arguments. Had Bush taken an interest in the Geneva Conventions or read about them, or had he been pro-active about making sure he has heard all sides of the debate on the issue before issuing a decision, it may well be that the United States never would have abandoned the Conventions.

Undoubtedly, Colin Powell sees Barack Obama's deliberative way of coming to decisions and now-legendary insistence on hearing all sides of an argument as insurance that a President Obama's powers will never be hijacked by a radical faction within his administration. And, just as certainly, he must see John McCain's volatile temperment and impulsive decision-making as antithetical to a properly-functioning Presidency.

PS: Extra props to Powell for going out of his way to reiterate that, not only is Barack Obama not a Muslim, but it is wrong--and un-American--to think that there would be anything wrong with him if he were a Muslim. Also, his story about the Muslim mother weeping at the grave was very powerful, and one I hadn't heard before.

"History will not judge this kindly"

The internets are a-buzz over a big report from ABC News that reveals that people at the highest levels of the Bush administration gave detailed instructions to the CIA as to which methods of torture could be used against detainees:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News....

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding....

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

What's more, even after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke and the Justice Department withdrew what had been the legal sanction for the "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e., torture), Rice went ahead and approved the techniques anyway for a suspect being held in Asia:

A year later, amidst the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the top al Qaeda suspects, leaked to the press. A new senior official in the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo -- the Golden Shield -- that authorized the program.

But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."

There is absolutely nothing in the ideology or history of American conservatism or the Republican Party that condones the unilateral use of torture by the executive branch of the government. Republicans and Democrats should therefore feel free to unite in their condemnation of the Bush administration's excesses in a way that transcends the partisan squabbles of the moment and re-asserts the American people's basic sense of decency and humanity.