ShareThisIt's hard to remember way back to the days when we didn't know our left from our right.
But because it feels great to ace any test, we begin today with a feel-good Left-Right Quickie Quiz:
-- Question: You learn the president decided the terror interrogation facility at Guantanamo Bay should be closed because it's no longer keeping America safer and is harming our nation's image around the world. Also, you learn the simulated drowning torture technique known as water boarding is being discontinued because it wasn't yielding valuable information. And you hear Dick Cheney saying Guantanamo should stay open and water boarding worked wonderfully -- and those decisions make America less safe.
Are you thinking the president seems like a right winger or left winger?
-- Answer: The president who first decided that Guantanamo's interrogation facility should be closed was George W. Bush. And it was under Bush that the CIA halted water boarding. Thus, by the standard articulated most recently by former Vice President Cheney and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, it is Cheney's old boss who apparently deserves to be labeled as some sort of softy, a flower-power left-winger.
And the same must be true, by that logic, of America's then (and now) Defense Secretary, Robert Gates -- he too has come out in favor of closing the Guantanamo facility. So have Sen. John McCain and prominent generals and admirals.
Not the least of them being four-star Gen. Colin Powell, himself a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. As Bush's Secretary of State, Powell took on Cheney in the Bush inner circle and made the case for closing Guantanamo. And he told correspondent Bob Schieffer on CBS News' Face the Nation that Bush had decided that Guantanamo must be closed, but ran out of time before he could implement it. President Obama is actually implementing a Bush decision.
Obama did one thing more: He ordered the release of those Justice Department memos so that Americans could debate whether or not we want to be the sort of nation that performs such legal gymnastics in tough times. .
"I felt Guantanamo should be closed for the past six years, and I lobbied and presented reasons to President Bush," Powell said. "And Mr. Cheney is not only disagreeing with President Obama's policy. He's disagreeing with President Bush's policy."
On Sunday, CNN's State of the Union, host John King thought he had just the right guest to settle the pseudo-left-right question of whether America's homeland is more or less secure because of Obama's policies. Tom Ridge, the former Bush secretary of Homeland Security. King noted Cheney has said Obama has made Americans less safe and asked: "Do you agree?"
Ridge, a sometimes-moderate Republican, began nailing his Jell-O to all walls, left and right: "Well, I agree that both men in principle are saying the right thing to the American public. President Obama has said we must conduct ourselves and combat terrorism in a way that's consistent with our value system, and I think he is spot-on." He asserted that Cheney wants to do all things that can protect Americans and "I think Americans in large agree with both."
King, not one to waste his Sundays walking weasels, pursued: "Do you believe we are less safe today because of steps taken by President Obama?"
-- Ridge: "I do not."
-- King: "You disagree with Dick Cheney then?"
-- Ridge: "Yes, I disagree with Dick Cheney...Water boarding is... a matter of debate, but it's no longer an issue because we don't do it. At the end of the day, we're continuing the same policies in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the debate around memos and water boarding does not make us less safe."
Here in Washington, it's getting harder and harder to tell left from right. Sometimes the once-bold line between the extremes is barely discernable -- just a wan, wavering Ridge.
(Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail him at martin.schram(at)gmail.com.)
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