Whatever sympathies Obama may have for liberalism, or even for the Constitution, he cannot be trusted to fight for either if he feels it is not politically in his interest.

The calculation is simple enough: liberal and progressive voters will hold their noses and vote for him anyway. Moving right increases the range of people he can appeal to and costs him very few votes. Three supreme court justices, after all, are held hostage.

What this means is not just donations, nor volunteering. It means building up an infrastructure and a cadre. It means being able to put a machine on the ground which can do registering, canvassing and GOTV. It means having a message machine, from think tanks to ad agencies to reporters and columnists who actually believe in liberalism. It means being able to funnel money to those who need it and can use it. It means having a media machine which can reliably communicate with both the base and the population in general.

With that you remake the party. You do it one incumbent at a time. When they retire you make sure that the person who replaces them is as liberal as possible. When they don't retire, you pick your fights and primary the most egregious ones. Even if you fail (and the right fails more often than they win) the near-death experience is a warning shot across the bows that changes behaviour. (Notice how quiet Specter has been since his near-death experience.) You can do that because you can put a machine on the ground, you can provide policy through your think tanks, you can spread messages through your media and you can pump money where it needs to be when it needs to be. ...

Because no single person is going to save the Democratic party, or the US. Obama, as he just proved, won't. But, to be fair, neither will anyone else. No one person can do it, not even someone who really wanted to. As FDR once said "now make me do it." To get the government and the politicians you deserve you'll have to deserve them. And you'll deserve them by making them do the right thing, not expecting them to. (my emphasis)

Barrack Obama plans to be the next President of the United States. Once he becomes President, he will be in the same position as George W. Bush: he wants all the power he needs to protect the country. Moreover, he will be the beneficiary of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and he wants to get some important legislation passed in his first two years in office.

Given these facts, why in the world would Obama oppose the current FISA compromise bill? If it's done on Bush's watch, he doesn't have to worry about wasting political capital on it in the next year. Perhaps it gives a bit too much power to the executive. But he plans to be the executive, and he can institute internal checks within the Executive Branch that can keep it from violating civil liberties as he understands them. And not to put too fine a point on it, once he becomes president, he will likely see civil liberties issues from a different perspective anyway.

So, in short, from Obama's perspective, what's not to like?

If you really care about civil liberties in the National Surveillance State, you have to recognize that both parties will be constructing its institutions. The next President will be a major player in its construction, as important if not more important than George W. Bush ever was. That President will want more authority to engage in surveillance, and he'll be delighted for Congress to give it to him officially.