When a commenter came here to drop a quick stink bomb-and-plug to his site trashing Obama, I followed him back home, and tried to debate on the issue. The blogger simply pejoratively dismissed my arguments without offering anything of substance to explain the dismissal, but it nevertheless gave me a chance to work out some new ideas. One thing I reflected on was the sense of betrayal, as if Obama had suddenly demonstrated antagonism for civil rights in general, or even just the impression that Obama had made a policy shift at all.

My own conclusion is that Obama’s FISA decision was meaningless in terms of policy or effect, and was purely a calculated political movie for the sake of the election. The key comes in looking at the bill in the Senate: a vote to filibuster the new bill was defeated, 80-15. Just to filibuster would have required moving the votes of 25 senators. Defeating the bill would have taken another ten. A similar attempt to block telecom immunity lost in the Senate by about twenty votes.

Even for a powerful, influential, seated president, shifting that many votes in the Senate would be a virtual impossibility; for a newly-minted nominee, it would be simply impossible. Obama is not the messiah, nor is he a magician. If he were to lead a fight on the FISA bill, he would surely lose. And in an election year, to put up a fight and then lose it–most likely by a wide margin–while the other candidate wins and can claim the mantle of national security as a result, well, that would be bad. No matter how viscerally satisfying such a display would be for we who see this as a very important issue, such a battle could have a disastrous effect on the chances of our party top retake the White House. So those who are disappointed that Obama did not make a battle out of this are perhaps not seeing the big picture on this issue.

Still, that doesn’t explain why Obama doesn’t simply vote “no” and make a statement of principle more in alignment with what the netroots want to hear. One thing that should be kept in mind here is that such a stand would have no practical effect in our favor; his vote and his statement would be purely symbolic. There could, however, be a negative practical effect in that McCain could use this issue to beat him over the head. As I stated before, I truly doubt that McCain could make so much of this as to actually make a dent in the campaign, but it nevertheless could explain Obama’s thinking on the matter.

In the end, by saying what he did, Obama did not make official any policy shifts away from what we thought; he made a statement of his opposition to the telecom immunity, and what he said on other matters were either a matter of balancing pros and con, or were at best inferred policy statements, not solid, actual ones. Slippery, perhaps, but again, this is usual for election-year politics.

The point I am trying to make here is that this entire matter does not have to be a policy or principle betrayal by Obama, but instead nothing more than a calculated political move in an election year on an issue where the candidate was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t anyway, so he chose to be damned in a way that could help him get elected.

I still think that it was the wrong move, and he’ll probably wind up being hurt in fundraising more than he would have if McCain could use this against him. But like I said, it’s probably not the huge deal that many purists seem to be taking it as.