The Death of Process

From the beginning the Obama campaign and administration has made a point, even a fetish, of process. Judgement matters and good process is considered vital to increasing the chances that good judgements will be made. Hillary Clinton’s 3am alarm call advert during the primary was deemed silly because, actually, it’s pretty unusual for a President to have to make an instant, sleepy-headed and blurry-eyed call of the kind imagined by the advert. And of course Obama’s supporters in that primary tended to think his judgement – cooler, more measured, less flighty – better than Hillary’s. Iraq was not the only data point, either.

So let’s see what David Brooks has to say today:

President Obama took this decision, I’m told, fully aware that there was no political upside while there were enormous political risks. He took it fully aware that we don’t know much about Libya. He took it fully aware that if he took this action he would be partially on the hook for Libya’s future.