This is why he's the Dean.
David Broder: Stop the Scapegoating
"If ever there is a time for President Obama to trust his instincts and stick to his guns, that time is now, when he is being pressured to change his mind about closing the books on the "torture" policies of the past.
Obama, to his credit, has ended one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States.
He was right to do this. But he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government. And he was right, when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices.
But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more -- the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps -- or, at least, careers and reputations.
Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability -- and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance...
...The torture memos represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places -- the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department -- by the proper officials.
One administration later, a different group of individuals occupying the same offices have -- thankfully -- made the opposite decision. Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors?
That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness -- and injustice.
Suppose that Obama backs down and Holder or someone else starts hauling Bush administration lawyers and operatives into hearings and courtrooms.
Suppose the investigators decide the country does not want to see the former president and vice president in the dock. Then underlings pay the price while big shots go free. But at some point, if he is at all a man of honor, George W. Bush would feel bound to say: That was my policy. I was the president. If you want to indict anyone for it, indict me.
Is that where we want to go? I don't think so. Obama can prevent it by sticking to his guns."
The truth is that compassion, empathy, and the wisdom that springs from it, is the best that liberalism has to offer.
This was why I was a liberal as a kid. And it is where the best instincts of both liberals and conservatives are found.
It is no mistake that Jesus of Nazareth, the spiritual inspiration for most liberals and conservatives in America and in the world, had a life and a philosophy centered in love and compassion. And it is no mistake that this life and philosophy and the similarly decent and compassionate belief systems of so many moral, religious, and philosophical traditions serve as the moral compasses of most people around the world.
It is no mistake that most children in America learn to "do unto others as you would them do unto you."
The most important rule in this situation as should be the case in most cases in America and almost all matters in the world is the Golden Rule.
But every so often, our baser, more vengeful, more meanspirited, uglier impulses creep up and get confused with these nobler ideals.
It is about time that we stop this nonsense and stop pretending that the ugliness is really more decent or honest or better than it is.
We have gone on long enough like this.
Now is a good time to end this and to move forward.
Because, frankly, if we do not, this is not an America, anymore, that I would want to be a part of if we were choose anything different.
Because I, for one, cannot choose the ugliness and call it decent when it very clearly is not.
And I'm tired of the pretenders being taken more seriously than they deserve this political period.
It is time for us to make a turn for much more genuine progress.
And this direction, of more genuine liberal compassion and wisdom, marks the way.
If only we will have the wisdom to follow it.
