AsiansVote endorses Barack Obama for President

03.03.08 - Posted by AsiansVote

We wish we could base our endorsement for president on who has the best plan for addressing global warming and fully funding Head Start and ending anti-immigrant rhetoric and dealing with the upcoming recession and giving us electric cars and marriage equality and universal health care and pretty, pretty ponies.

But the next president has a much more fundamental task -- restoring the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States of America.

We believe electing Barack Obama is our best chance of getting the job done.

Over the past eight years, the Bush Administration has brought us warrantless wiretaps, presidential signing statements that amount to an unconstitutional line item veto, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, an attorney general who apparently fired US attorneys for partisan political reasons, a second attorney general who refuses to enforce congressional subpoenas, a war of aggression, and torture. These aren't just everyday choices between liberal and conservative policies; these are attacks on fundamental American principles and freedoms.

Last year, a group called the American Freedom Campaign pushed each of the presidential candidates to take the American Freedom Pledge, which reads:

We are Americans, and in our America we do not torture, we do not imprison people without charge or legal remedy, we do not tap people's phones and emails without a court order, and above all we do not give any President unchecked power. I pledge to fight to protect and defend the Constitution from attack by any President.

Barack Obama signed the pledge on October 2, 2007. Hillary Clinton, the last of the Democratic candidates to address the request, followed a few days later with a letter in which she affirmed the principles of the statement, touting her vote against "the President's wiretapping bill this past August."

Unfortunately, Senator Clinton skipped the vote on February 12 in which the Senate considered the FISA bill's grant of immunity for telecoms that participated in the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping. The week before, she similarly failed to show up for a vote to sunset the FISA bill in four years rather than six. Obama was present for both votes -- and voted both to strip the immunity provisions and to sunset the FISA bill early.

Both of the amendments failed by wide enough margins that Senator Clinton's vote wouldn't have made a difference. But her failure to vote implies a less than total commitment to defending the rule of law. Senator Clinton has only reinforced the impression with her call to seat Florida and Michigan delegates against Democratic Party rules and her campaign's eleventh hour threats to sue over the Texas Democratic Party's delegate selection process.

In all fairness, Senator Obama has passed up plenty of opportunities to lead himself. He could have filibustered the torture bill. He could have joined Senator Christopher Dodd much earlier in fighting the FISA bill. He could have filibustered the confirmation of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who just showed his true colors by rejecting contempt citations against Harriet Miers and John Bolton for ignoring congressional subpoenas (instead, both Obama and Clinton said they opposed Mukasey but skipped the actual vote). He could have publicly pressured Senator Harry Reid to take up the Judiciary Committee bill that didn't include immunity provisions for telecoms instead of the Intelligence Committee bill that did.

But as the Obama campaign has frequently noted, Obama did speak out when it mattered regarding the war in Iraq. While we haven't heard Obama use the words "war of aggression" or call Donald Rumsfeld a war criminal, in 2002, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama called the Iraq War: "A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."

Furthermore, as George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen notes in the New York Times, Senator Obama has made at least one proactive stand for the Constitution:

In the Senate, Mr. Obama distinguished himself by making civil liberties one of his legislative priorities. He co-sponsored a bipartisan reform bill that would have cured the worst excesses of the Patriot Act by meaningfully tightening the standards for warrantless surveillance. Once again, he helped encourage a coalition of civil-libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives. The effort failed when Hillary Clinton joined 13 other Democrats in supporting a Republican motion to cut off debate on amendments to the Patriot Act.

Either Clinton or Obama would be vastly preferable to Senator John McCain, who voted for torture and virtually every other Bush Administration policy. And we will gladly support Senator Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination -- as Rosen notes, "she would be immeasurably better on civil liberties than George W. Bush." And we deeply respect the passion of supporters like Elena Ong, who have devoted months to Hillary Clinton for her commitment to universal health care and women's rights.

But for showing up to vote and for at least occasionally leading the fight against the Bush Administration's attacks on the Constitution and the rule of law, Senator Obama has has won our enthusiastic support and vote in the primaries.

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03.03.08 | 2008 Presidential Candidates , Candidates & Leaders , Civil Rights & Liberties , Issues