AP PHOTO/BILL HABER (HOLDER); AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK (CRAIG)
Exit
point of Hamlet-like indecision,”
time and again Tammany Hall ultimately won the day — in a process
that remains opaque and, frankly,
quite disillusioning.
Attorney General Eric Holder
and former White House counsel
Greg Craig are the de facto protagonists of Klaidman’s book — which
would have been a far better read
without the author’s studied neutrality — but they keep getting
beaten down, marginalized and humiliated by Emanuel and Obama.
On drone strikes, Klaidman
lays out a slew of reasons why
Obama should have been more
ambivalent about their use, starting with the fact that the very
first drone strike of his presidency claimed not a terrorist, but a
prominent pro-government tribal
elder and four members of his
family (including two children).
Why this didn’t dissuade Obama
is left unclear. One possible reason
is Emanuel’s enthusiasm. “For all
the handwringing among the lawyers and civil libertarians, Obama’s
chief of staff understood the political upside to a program that took
out high-level terrorists,” Klaidman writes. In fact, Emanuel had a
“quasi obsession” with the drone
strikes and how they were going to
BOOKS
“help my guy” that left “even some
CIA veterans uncomfortable.”
Klaidman also outlines how a
Emanuel total miscalculation that
Sen. Lindsey Graham would get the
GOP on board with closing Guantanamo so long as Obama sacrificed
pretty much all of his campaign
promises led to the administration’s abject collapse on the issue.
Still, it’s too easy to blame
Emanuel. It was Obama who chose
him and took his advice so many
times. Much like Ron Suskind
wrote in 2011 in Confidence Men:
Wall Street, Washington, and the
Education of a President, about
Obama’s woeful economic team,
the administration’s lack of boldness isn’t any one advisor’s doing, but rather a reflection of how
Obama wields power — at least
domestically. Abroad, he is making up his own rules
as he goes along.
HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
Attorney
General Eric
Holder, left,
and former
White House
counsel Greg
Craig.