Obama Makes Bushism the New Normal

In a lot of ways, we're worse off today than we were under George W. Bush.

Back then, Bush's extremist assault on civil liberties, human rights and other core American values in the name of fighting terror felt like an aberration.

The expectation was that those policies would be quickly reversed, discredited -- and explicitly outlawed -- once he was no longer in power.

Instead, under President Barack Obama , they've become institutionalized.

There will be no snapping back to a pre-Bush-era respect for basic human dignity and civil rights. Thanks to Obama, it's going to be a hard, long fight.

In some cases, Obama has set even darker precedents than his predecessor. Massively invasive bulk surveillance of Americans and others has been expanded , not constrained. This president secretly condemns people to death without any checks or balances, and shrugs as his errant drones massacre innocent civilians . Whistleblowers and journalists who expose national security wrongdoing face unprecedented criminal prosecution.

In a few cases, Obama publicly distanced himself from Bush/Cheney excesses, but to little effect. He forswore torture, and promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But by actively covering up what happened in the U.S.'s torture chambers, and by refusing to hold the torturers and their political masters in any way accountable, he has done nothing to make sure that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, it won't all happen again. And Gitmo, which he treated as a political rather than moral issue, is still very much open for business.

To his credit, Obama is not driven, like Bush and Dick Cheney were, to involve us in massive land wars. And he inherited a mess full of no-win scenarios. But he chose to extend a dead-end war in Afghanistan for two years -- and 1,300 American lives -- based on political optics rather than military strategy. And he is blind to reality in the Middle East; cleaving to the belief that airstrikes and fealty to Israel are viable long-term strategies, and ignoring the fact that his counter-terrorism policies actually create more terrorists than they destroy.

In retrospect, what the country needed was a radical break from the Bush/Cheney national security policies: A reestablishment of American moral integrity; a rejection of decision-making based on fear (of terrorism, or of political blowback); a reassertion of the international laws of war; and a national reckoning.

Instead, the hopes for any change are slim. Obama has eroded the credibility of any future promises of expansive reform in the area of national security. And, in any case, no such promises are forthcoming: Congressional response to the recent disclosures has been narrowly focused and prone to loopholes; the current leadership of both political parties -- and their likeliest standard-bearers in 2016 -- aren't expressing any outrage at all.

As surely -- if not as enthusiastically -- as his predecessor, Obama has succumbed to the powerful systemic pressures that serve the needs of the military-intelligence-industrial complex. Secrecy is rampant. Politics drives policy. There is no accountability. Congressional and judicial oversight have become a bitter joke. And the elite press gets tighter and tighter with those to whom it should be adversarial.

That, in short, is where I find myself today, as I take up my blogging cudgel again, at The Intercept .

Those of you familiar with my White House Watch column on washingtonpost.com (it ran from early 2004 to mid-2009) may remember my attempt to organize the data stream about the White House, with intelligence and voice.

Reading copiously is one approach. Even in a flawed press climate, a pretty compelling picture emerges when you connect the dots. I'll be doing that relentlessly, and with a particular focus on the areas that concern me the most. Among them: National security issues and whistleblowing; the collapse of oversight; media failure; political exploitation of fear; torture; the corrupting influence of money; and the moral bankruptcy of the major political parties.

I also want to spend a lot of time exploring issues related to privacy policy in an era of ubiquitous data. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's primary and most admirable goal was to spark a national conversation about surveillance and privacy. But the conversations that have ensued have been relatively narrow and muted.

I'll be doing original reporting -- from the Snowden archive, and elsewhere. I'll be asking lots of questions. And I intend to serve as a megaphone for sometimes insufficiently heard people who have great ideas -- and who have a track record of being proven correct over time, rather than, say, consistently wrong . (Nominees welcome!)

And I'll be depending on readers to do it all. There's so much more to keep track of than there was even five years ago -- heck, keeping abreast of Twitter lately has been nearly a full-time job -- so I'll need help finding the newest, the most intriguing, the best and the worst. There will be new ways for informed readers to make important contributions to the discussion.

Most significantly, this is a work in progress. The principal goal that seems to be emerging at First Look Media -- the umbrella organization financed by Pierre Omidyar that publishes The Intercept -- is experimentation in the pursuit of accountability.

If you have ideas on how I can do any of this better (from the micro to the macro; story topics to software) I want to hear them. Post a comment; email me at dan.froomkin@theintercept.com; or use our open-source whistleblower submission system, SecureDrop . I'll try to be transparent about what I'm thinking, and what I'm doing.

The blog will have a handful of regular features -- at least one of which will be familiar to White House Watch readers. Cartoon Watch will be back, because political cartoonists, as a group, remain our most incisive truth-tellers. I'll also have an Open Book feature, to call attention to great accountability reporting books; and we'll play around with the concept of Frequently Unanswered Questions (FUQ).

You can find my latest posts here -- or just click on the nifty "Froomkin" tab in The Intercept 's nav bar. You can also help me open-source my thought process on Twitter , follow me on Facebook , or subscribe to my RSS feed .

So welcome, or welcome back. We have so much to discuss.

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images