Shadow Government

A front-row seat to the Republicans' debate over foreign policy, including their critique of the Biden administration.

The Obama-Cheney battle royale

By Christian Brose Before tomorrow’s battle royale of speechmaking between President Obama and former Vice President Cheney regarding the conflict formerly known as the War on Terror, make sure you first check out Jack Goldsmith’s spot-on piece in the New Republic. It’s a must-read: Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama’s reversal of Bush-era ...

By Christian Brose

Before tomorrow’s battle royale of speechmaking between President Obama and former Vice President Cheney regarding the conflict formerly known as the War on Terror, make sure you first check out Jack Goldsmith’s spot-on piece in the New Republic. It’s a must-read:

Former Vice President Cheney says that President Obama’s reversal of Bush-era terrorism policies endangers American security. The Obama administration, he charges, has "moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a follow-on terrorist attack like 9/11." Many people think Cheney is scare-mongering and owes President Obama his support or at least his silence. But there is a different problem with Cheney’s criticisms: his premise that the Obama administration has reversed Bush-era policies is largely wrong. The truth is closer to the opposite: The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expanded some of it, and has narrowed only a bit. Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric. This does not mean that the Obama changes are unimportant. Packaging, argumentation, symbol, and rhetoric, it turns out, are vitally important to the legitimacy of terrorism policies.

Also, over at AEI’s great new blog, Danielle Pletka makes a good case for why Obama, despite running the "savviest information ops of any White House in modern history," still has his work cut out for him tomorrow.

This will be very interesting…

Christian Brose is a senior editor at Foreign Policy. He served as chief speechwriter and policy advisor for U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2005 to 2008, and as speechwriter for former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2004 to 2005.

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