Obama Visits White House: Receives Welcome, Executive Information from Bush
Executive Powers, Politics-US, Rendition & Ghost Flights, Vote 2008
President-elect Barack Obama has been welcomed by Pres. Bush as the two confer on the work of governing, the process of transition, the inner workings of the residence and security issues. It is Obama’s 8th trip to the White House, his first to the Oval Office itself. Reuters reports that Bush and Obama “were expected to discuss the global financial crisis, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other challenges the Republican president will bequeath to his Democratic successor”.
It is no secret that President-elect Obama has been a relentless critic of Pres. Bush and his policies at home and abroad, but he has also campaigned on a platform of “post-partisan” cooperation and reconciliation. So what seemed to be a genuine gesture of welcome from Pres. Bush was a sign the two men may be able to achieve what both have said is their current priority, a seamless transfer of power, even in the midst of the major challenges on the military and economic fronts.
Stephanie Cutter, a spokesperson for Obama’s transition team, told the press that he and Pres. Bush “had a broad discussion about the importance of working together throughout the transition of government in light of the nation’s many critical economic and security challenges.” She added that “President-elect Obama thanked President Bush for his commitment to a smooth transition, and for his and first lady Laura Bush’s gracious hospitality in welcoming the Obamas to the White House”.
After the heated tone of the presidential campaign, the warm and relaxed attitudes of the two men negotiating this transition is welcome, especially considering the unpopularity of the current president, and considering the partisan bitterness that emerged during the Clinton-Bush transition of 2000. But there will likely be many points of contention between the outgoing chief executive and the incoming president-elect, due to serious policy differences, and President-elect Obama’s plans to change course on many key Bush priorities.
Pres. Bush and his aides are reportedly preparing —as is customary for an outgoing president— a wave of executive orders that will institute new policy and may even affect the relationship between the executive and the Congress. Aides to Obama say he will use his executive authority to reverse many of Pres. Bush’s more controversial orders, such as a policy barring federal funds from being spent on embryonic stem-cell research.
The Guardian newspaper is reporting that legal advisers to President-elect Obama are currently drafting plans for a process whereby at least 80 inmates at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba would be moved to US soil, and tried in federal courts. The plan would also work toward the permanent closing of the facility, which was set up to circumvent constitutional protections for criminal defendants and international treaty obligations governing the detention of war prisoners. That logic has been struck down by the Bush-friendly Supreme Court, but the process of closure remains slow and complicated.
The ACLU has called on Obama to immediately move to ban torture and extraordinary rendition —which can deny prisoners habeas corpus rights and circumvent extradition treaties—, while the White House has warned that closing the prison camp may not be “so easy”, due to the potential threat some of the inmates are thought to pose. Obama’s transition office has said “There is absolutely no truth to reports that a decision has been made about how and where to try the detainees, and there is no process in place to make that decision until his national security and legal teams are assembled”.
The issue will likely be one of the new president’s stickiest early challenges. As the Guardian notes:
It would also be politically unpopular to keep the terror suspects in the US, with critics suggesting that could provoke retaliation from al-Qaida. The Pentagon concedes it has no evidence to charge the majority of the 250 detainees with terrorism.
Some of the men against whom there is no substantive evidence may be, as the Bush administration determined hundreds of others to be, no threat at all, or at least not guilty of any terrorist involvement prior to capture, but cannot be returned to their home countries, for political reasons. Most nations refuse to grant asylum to detainees accused of involvement in terrorism, which means the US might have to consider granting asylum itself — a more than unlikely outcome.
The first lady, Laura Bush, met with Michelle Obama, separately from their husbands, to review the inner workings of the residence and details about life in the White House. They were reported to have visited the room that will serve as bedroom for the Obamas’ daughters, Sasha and Malia, a room shared by Caroline and John F. Kennedy, Jr., when their father occupied the White House.