Daniel Henninger of the, of course, WSJ, starts making mindless points and piles on ideology.
He first notes, that "Now, in the grimmest way possible, he is Bush, another American president who must come to grips with the aftermath of a mortal act of Islamic terror on U.S. soil, televised to the whole world." What makes Obama not-Bush is his reaction to the attack. He treats them not as a prompt to implement the retraction of civil rights, the opportunity to plunge the country into a series of catastrophic overreactions and a basis for his identity as 'war president' (and all the economic, political and moral damage that caused). Rather, he allows the FBI and local law enforcement to carry out their duties (perhaps to their own overly reactive extent). In short, he treats the criminal act in proper, and effective perspective.
Next, he makes this claim: "George Bush immediately used his political capital—and paid a heavy price—to pass the Patriot Act." What cost exactly? The Patriot Act, in many ways, become the blue print for the entire eight years of the Bush administration: ignore civil and human rights, politicize every form of dissent and inquiry into political decision-making, stoke fear and threaten reprisal at any blowback or political questioning. To the contrary, one might counter-claim that the Patriot Act supplied the political capital for Bush to operate insulated from internal turmoil for a good six years.
Henninger then makes a false distinction: "The Patriot Act created the means to answer such questions. Its primary weapon to prevent terror was the wiretap, a surveillance tool virtually everyone in law enforcement says is the best way to catch criminals. " Everyone in law enforcement also said that such wire tapes must be procured through legal means: warrants and judicial oversight. The Bush approach abandoned such measures as expendable niceties, easily disposed of in times of terror. It created the fear from which it could then justify the ignoring of civil rights due to fear.
He does add one salient point: "When its turn came, the Obama administration used the Patriot Act—its title now grimly appropriate—and defended it in court. In 2011, the Obama administration embraced reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which Harry Reid years earlier promised to kill." Perhaps Henninger might want to peruse his own paper for coverage at the left's vitiating attacks on President Obama. Here, indeed, was a Bush-ism. The difference, if there is one, is that Obama's use of this legislation has been constrained, rather than defining. Not much to build on there, though.
He ends with note of mindless extrapolation: "But let us posit an unimpeachable fact: Whatever their eventual opinion of "Bush-Cheney," Bostonians and Americans generally would have happily signed off on a warrantless wiretap of the Tsarnaevs' phones before the deaths and mutilations of April 15, 2013." 'Unimpeachable;' cute.
How might we know who, ahead of time, would act in such a way? Does Henninger think that all phone conversations and all social networking and all email and all public, and even private, internal reflection, should be subject to warrant-less, aggressive data mining? The thought police, because then we would absolutely know in advance who would do what, and we can stop them?
