Obama About To Vote Present Again?

David Freddoso reports:

On Monday, Karl Rove was a no-show at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee at which he had been subpoenaed to testify. The committee had issued a subpoena for Rove to testify on the U.S. Attorney firings. He has cited the Bush administration's claim of executive privilege as his reason for not testifying.

 

If you haven't been following this affair over the last few weeks (or if you were out of the country, as I was), here is a brief look at what has happened. Obama must make up his mind in the next week whether to back the claim of executive privilege that is keeping Rove and two other former White House officials (Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten) from testifying. The D.C. Circuit Court has given the Obama administration until March 4 to weigh in.

 

As Obama's counsel, Greg Craig put it two weeks ago, Obama is "sympathetic" to those wishing to grill Rove, but also "mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. So, for that reason, he is urging both sides of this to settle."

 

This is a clever way of masking what amounts to a serious dilemma for an opportunistic politician. If Obama backs the claim of privilege, he risks serious outrage and disappointment on the Left. If he does not, he cedes a significant amount of power, and his own decisions over the next four (or eight) years could be similarly dissected someday by his political enemies.

 

Obama has never been known for making tough decisions on principle. (A possible exception was his October 2002 speech against the Iraq War, which his biographer David Mendell nonetheless attributes, in part, to Obama's already-planned 2004 Senate run.) Obama is hoping for Conyers and the former Bush advisors to reach a deal before he has to make this one.

I'm not overly concerned about the particular issue at stake here.  I'm posting this to illustrate yet another dangerous thing that we tried to warn (here, here, here) about Obama long before the election: his tendency to vote present.  While it's one thing to vote 'present' on an internal power struggle over the previous administration, Obama has also voted 'present' on major world conflicts.  That's what concerns me.  What happens if Iran nukes Israel?  What if Russia invades Ukraine?  Will Obama vote present on all of these things?  Will he lead, or will he follow whichever way the wind blows?

Not exactly a reassuring track record, is it?

There's my two cents.