From Hot Air,
Chuck Todd analyzed the Barack Obama missteps of the past week and wondered whether Obama realizes how he comes across to voters. Todd believes that Obama has left McCain an opening to claim the mantle of reformer after Obama tossed public financing under the bus, given McCain’s long track record on the issue and Obama’s non-existent record in return. And Todd notes that it’s one thing to be an empty suit in a season of change, but an arrogant empty suit won’t cut it.
This is not the first time the MSM has noticed Obama’s healthy sense of self. Back in March, the AP’s Ron Fournier noted that “Obama walks arrogance line”
WASHINGTON – Arrogance is a common vice in presidential politics. A person must be more than a little self-important to wake up one day and say, “I belong in the Oval Office.” But there’s a line smart politicians don’t cross — somewhere between “I’m qualified to be president” and “I’m born to be president.” Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step. He’s bordering on arrogance.
Arrogance and incompetence are an especially egregious combination. Our friend from Powerline, Scott Johnson, has an op-ed in today’s New York Post titled ANTI-TERROR OOPS and he touches on Barack’s response to the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling in the Boumediene case,
He explained: “I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are, but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle.”
Oops. At Nuremberg, an international military commission composed of representatives of the victorious Allies put the top surviving Nazi leaders on trial starting in late 1945.
Yet, in Boumediene, the Supreme Court disapproved of the system of military commissions that Congress had adopted for Gitmo (at the high court’s previous urging). Thus, the Nuremberg defendants’ “day in court” came before a kind of tribunal found constitutionally inadequate in the decision Obama was praising.
The Nazi war criminals had no access to US courts. The fair-trial provision of the charter governing the trial was relatively skimpy – and the provision on appeal rights was even shorter and sweeter: The defendants had no right to appeal. The procedures the court found deficient in Boumediene, by contrast, provided for appeal rights to the DC Circuit, the most prominent US bench below the Supreme Court.
In short, the procedural protections for Gitmo detainees under the statute before the Supreme Court in Boumediene exceed those accorded the Nuremberg defendants.
Obama’s unfavorable comparison of the legal treatment at Gitmo with that at Nuremberg suggests either that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about – or that he feels free to exploit the ignorance of audiences that don’t know the truth of the matter.
UPDATE: Even Jon Stewart is noticing,