More on Obama's decision-making on torture issues...

Barack Obama is not a devious man. The chief reason he gave for changing his mind and declining to release the 29 photos showing American soldiers torturing Afghans and Iraqis was that military commanders, particularly in Afghanistan, asked him not to do so, because they felt it would heighten the risk of violence to their soldiers serving there. Because the Republicans had trashed Obama six ways to Sunday about his lack of national security experience for two solid years during the presidential campaign, with McCain practically accusing him of being an unrealistic peacenik, it was inevitable that he would have to build a trusting relationship with senior military commanders once he took office. So far he's done that skillfully. Declining to release photos now which the White House fully expects to come out later anyway is a tactical concession to these commanders, a sign of his respect for their judgment. And it's also a way to maintain distance between the White House and the developing four-alarm media circus about Cheney and his torture-defending road show, which could otherwise engulf the Obama presidency at this point if the president became a central actor in determining precisely what will happen in adducing evidence that could lead to meaningful legal actions against Bush officials.

The political moment for firmly establishing this presidency as likely to be formidable and successful is still fragile. A lot of political insiders are extremely impressed with how Obama is handling himself, and the public seems to agree. But the Washington press corps and the broadcast media are another matter. They're mischaracterizing what he is doing and saying on a daily basis, in their nightly cartoon strip of our politics. He has to maintain as much distance from that level of coverage as possible. The torture debate has already levitated away from the factual record and become an inside-the-Beltway slanging match. The only way to rescue it is for there to be patient, exhaustive congressional hearings, which Pat Leahy and others are organizing as we speak. If Obama were to instruct DOJ to start investigations, then the media would depict Obama as Inspector Javert pursuing the accursed Cheney, and the public would believe that Obama had been willingly caught up in another Washington political obsession rather than doing the job he was elected to do. The White House staying out of this debate as much as possible actually helps the debate about Bush's torture practices to be less political and more about real evidence.

In American history no president or vice president immediately after the completion of his term has ever been the subject of investigations -- initiated by the new administration -- for criminal violations. Until substantial evidence of that wrong-doing is evident to the public, any initiative by Obama for such investigations would set off a political firestorm not seen since Watergate. Let the evidence accumulate. Let the public come gradually to a judgment. Sometimes it's right for presidents to follow public opinion instead of lead it, particularly if collateral damage to the president's other priorities -- in the form of diminished news coverage and poisoning the political atmosphere -- can thereby be avoided. Obama was not elected to be an avenging angel imposing retribution on the political leaaders he supplanted. He was elected to save the economy, restore America's positive influence in the world, and change -- not reinforce -- our delirious political culture.