the silly season

But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists – people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

(...)
That is not how we should be doing business in the U.S. Senate, and that’s not how we should be prosecuting this war on terrorism. When we’re sloppy and cut corners, we are undermining those very virtues of America that will lead us to success in winning this war. At bare minimum, I hope we can at least pass this provision so that cooler heads can prevail after the silly season is over. Thank you.

Barack Obama speaking before the Senate on the detainee bill. (Via Atrios.)

I have deep reservations about calling this fine mess we've got ourselves into a "War on Terrorism", so it makes me a bit queasy to hear Obama refer to it the way he does here. But I excuse him in my mind the way I excuse Lincoln when I read about the ways he played to the crowd in an effort to get everyone pointed in the same direction on the whole dissolution of the Union question. 'Cause once he had won his seat and push came to shove, he kicked some serious ass.

(See: Emancipation Proclamation. Genuine equivocation loaded with political pandering -- like not freeing folks who were enslaved within the Northern states, and only bothering about those who were out of reach, within the Confederacy -- but his heart was in the right place. And these many years later we only remember the heart part. And the setting people free, part. Good stuff, that.)

Maybe that just makes me a fool in love, but baby, I've gotta have someone to believe in. The pickin's are pretty slim around here.

p.s. I also find it a bit incredulous that he would call something so serious "the silly season" -- I wonder if the transcriber got it wrong -- I wonder if he called it "the selling season"?