Spy V. Hunt
ShareThe political metrics of the NSA spying issue are not zero-sum, especially since neither party has figured out the right rhetorical and positional balance on those grand civil liberties-v-national security questions.
Forget George Lakoff: in this debate, facts and narrative both matter.
Our thoughts below are (a) somewhat obviou and (b) positive, not normative.
Most Americans WANT the president to "HUNT DOWN TERRORISTS" and probably care about court orders and oversight secondarily. We wouldn't be surprised if the phrase "court order" sounds to most Americans like "with the support of our allies" sounded during the presidential campaign.
A guess: if the administration can keep the frame on terrorism, Americans won't care as much about the technicalities of whether Bush fibbed when he suggested in '04 that courts supervise surveillance activities. (Given the choice between revealing a highly classified program you believed critical to national security or eliding over distinctions, wouldn't you choose the latter course?)
Dems and civil liberties advocates hope a different narrative prevails. As in -- "domestic surveillance of US citizens."
If, say, thousands of citizens had their e-mail monitored without warrants or domestic to domestic phone calls were picked up, and if the WH knew about it -- then atmospherics favor a challenge to the president's credibility.
Consider: probable Specter hearings in Jan, FISA's own investigation, internal NSA and CIA investigations, inevitable (and serious) court challenges, dueling op-eds, drib-drab revelations of inadvertent miscues and, in six months, a new debate about the Patriot Act -- well if there's domestic creep-us-out stuff there, it'll probably come out.
By the way: we used the word "spy" in the first sentence of this post. We could easily have written this sentence: "the political metrics of the NSA collection program to monitor suspect terrorists..."
If the debate fixates on "spying" -- it's not good for the administration. If "terror" prevails -- it is. [MARC AMBINDER]
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