Pusillanimity

Krugman on Obama’s pusillanimous position on FISA:

My biggest concern about an Obama administration is that, in the end, he won’t make universal health care a priority. My second biggest concern is that “Unity” means never having to say you’re sorry: that in the name of putting past partisanship behind us, the next administration will sweep the abuses of the past 8 years under the rug, the same way Bill Clinton did in 1993; the result of that decision was that the very same people responsible for Iran-Contra showed up subverting our democracy all over again.

I always said that if Iran-Contra accomplished nothing else, at least Elliott Abrams, possessor of the smuggest face in the Reagan administration, would never become secretary of state.

I’m not sure which possibility is actually more worrying: 1) that Obama doesn’t consider this an important matter of principle and the Bushies’ domestic spying a significant abuse of power, or 2) that he isn’t willing to “distract” himself from his campaign by engaging with this issue. Neither bodes well.

But my greatest disappointment is not with Obama or Hoyer or Pelosi, but with the American people for not making it abundantly clear with their collective outrage that standing up to the administration’s lawlessness and to retroactive immunity would be politically popular as well as, you know, the right thing to do.

Note: in my 4,416 posts, that was the first time I’ve employed the word pusillanimous. I kind of enjoyed it. I may do it again sometime. Leave suggestions in comments for any other words you’d like to see me use in a sentence.