A Liberal Hawk

Powerline pays Obama a complement:

The interesting question is not whether Obama will continue to tack towards the center as a candidate -- that's a virtual certainty. The interesting question is what he'll do if elected president.

In that event, it's quite likely that Obama will move back towards the left, since that's where his sympathies have always been and since, once elected, he'll feel less constrained in the short term. But it's almost certain that Obama won't satisfy his leftist supporters when it comes to foreign, defense, and security policy. That's mostly because Obama is far too intelligent to embrace leftist indifference to obvious national security concerns.

Thus, for reasons of pragmatism and patriotism, Obama will be quite keen, for example, to prevent a successful attack on the homeland. Indeed, I suspect that Obama's current position with respect to surveillance of terrorists (including suits against companies that cooperate in that surveillance) is not just the product of strategic political thinking but also a reflection of what he'd like to be able to do as president. Let's hope so.