Michael Cohen writing for the Guardian about his colleague Glenn Greenwald’s accusations of Democratic/liberal hypocrisy on NSA surveillance:
First, the lion’s share of criticism of these recent revelations has come, overwhelmingly, from … Democrats and, indeed, from many of the same people, including Greenwald, who were up in arms when the so-called warrantless wiretapping program was revealed in 2006. The reality is that outside a minority of activists, it’s not clear that many Americans – Democrats or Republicans – get all that excited about these types of stories. (Not that this is necessarily a good thing.)
Second, opposition to the Bush program was two-fold: first, it was illegal and was conducted with no judicial or congressional oversight; second, Bush’s surveillance policies did not occur in a vacuum – they were part of a pattern of law-breaking, disastrous policy decisions and Manichean rhetoric over the “war on terror”. So, if you opposed the manner in which Bush waged war on the “axis of evil”, it’s not surprising that you would oppose its specific elements. In the same way, if you now support how President Obama conducts counter-terrorism efforts, it’s not surprising that you’d be more inclined to view specific anti-terror policies as more benign. [...]
Beyond that, simply having greater confidence in President Obama than President Bush to wield the awesome powers granted the commander-in-chief to conduct foreign policy is not partisanship. It’s common sense.
Yes. Again, it’s natural for a liberal to trust the policies of a center-left politician over, say, Cheney or Ashcroft or Rumsfeld. But it’s convenient for Greenwald to use this as a variation of the dismissive and myopic “liberal bias” commonly used on the right.