Gerald Warner: Time to stop flip-flopping on policy and act like a President

'YOU'RE accusing the CIA of lying to you?" The ABC correspondent could scarcely believe his ears. "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States," reiterated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, triggering pandemonium among the assembled media at her press conference last Thursday. Who needs The West Wing, with this sort of stuff going down on Capitol Hill?

Not far away, in the Oval Office, Barack Obama must have been watching this political car-crash, recalling his January inauguration and wondering how he got from there to here. By continuing to campaign long after the election was over, is the answer: by remaining the candidate instead of transforming himself into the President.

The Obama administration, despite its hypocritical invocations of bi-partisanship, has stupidly indulged the revanchist instincts of the most extreme Democrats – the kind of fanatics who are still obsessing over pregnant chads in Florida in 2000. Slack-jawed talk about arraigning Condoleezza Rice or Dick Cheney furnished the mood music for Obama's decision to publish memos on "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" from Department of Justice officials directed to CIA officers. Cheers, stage left, for Obama the radical.

Then Obama the bi-partisan healer rushed to CIA headquarters to assure demoralised intelligence chiefs there would be no prosecutions. It was a time for "reflection, not retribution". (Groans, stage left; derision, stage right.) Then The One appeared to recover his radical chutzpah. On 23 April the administration authorised the Defense Department, in response to freedom of information proceedings by the American Civil Liberties Union, to publish photographs of apparent torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Officially, the reasoning was: when Muslims around the world see their brothers being subjected to abusive proceedings by Americans, they are going to be so grateful to us for letting them view the images that their hearts will overflow with love for the US of A, under its new victim-friendly government. The real agenda, of course, was the ruthlessly partisan objective of demonising the Republicans, on whose watch this unpleasantness occurred.

Then, last Wednesday, came another U-turn. The President decided, on second thoughts, against publication of the torture photographs. Why? Was it, once again, a time for reflection, not retribution? Or was it the startling allegation that Pelosi, a key Obama ally, had been briefed about the controversial interrogation techniques by the CIA as long ago as 2002 and had approved them?

That put rather a different complexion on things. It had been clearly understood that if miscreants were to be arraigned, either literally in court or metaphorically at the bar of public opinion, the dock was to be a Democrat-free zone. The administration is beginning to see that what at first looked like a straightforward case of brutal torture and human rights abuse by demonic Republicans may in fact have been a challenging moral dilemma which even sensitive Democrats found intractable.

The Speaker, however, is determined that, on this issue, the truth must be aired. To that end, she has told four versions of it, ranging from "(On 24 September] 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future"… to last Thursday's "On 5 February, 2003, a member of my staff informed me that (other legislators] had been briefed that these techniques were now being used."

Pelosi's attempt last Thursday to flee the room to avoid questioning spoke for itself. She has publicly accused the CIA of lying, just when Obama is trying to build bridges to his alienated intelligence community.

Is Pelosi toast? At the moment, her chances of survival are about 50-50, but the situation is extremely volatile and her Democrat colleagues are as derisory about her as Republicans. In a sense, it does not matter. For Obama to lose the Speaker of the House of Representatives so early in his term would be a catastrophe; but even if Pelosi survives, the signs are that his fatuous policy of perpetual campaigning and violent partisanship has fatally loosened the wheels on his wagon.

The other influence that is causing Obama to flip-flop on policy is simply increasing exposure to the realities of government. His latest about-turn on Friday, reinstating a limited number of military trials at Guantanamo, is a reflection of that surrender to reality. Already, the liberal fantasy that dominated American politics last November is being dispelled. Welcome to the real world, Mr President.