Obama's Accomplishments, Pre-US Senate edition

Continuing with posts adapted from the politics forum at artsandfaith.com, here is my response to those who wonder what Obama has ever accomplished.

First, I would point to his presidency of the Harvard Law Review and teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago. While those two accomplishment are not directly related to governing, they do demonstrate both intellectual curiosity and a deep, sophisticated understanding of the constitution. Many of the problems with the Bush presidency stem directly from a lack of intellectual curiosity and a dismissal of the constitution.

While he has a number of legislative accomplishments during his time in Illinois, the one that I think is the most significant is the bill requiring the police to videotape interrogations and confessions. It was not only the passage of the bill that was important, but the way he got it passed.

First, he believed that too many confessions were being coerced out of suspects and sometimes the coercion ventured into violence. His solution was rather simple; videotape both the interrogations and the confessions. Then there would be no question about what happens to suspects.

The biggest problem he faced was that the bill was initially opposed by the police. Normally that would make such a bill dead in the water. Democrats are scared to death of being tarred as soft on crime, so they have no motivation to support something that the police oppose. Republicans often are automatically "tough on crime" and also have no desire to cross the police.

So he did what I think Obama does best. He listened. He spent a lot of time with police officers and worked to understand their concerns. He supported some other bills that they wanted to pass. He helped them understand that videotaping both interrogations and confessions would protect suspects AND the police officers involved in questioning (good cops would not get lumped in with crooked cops, the video would protect them from false accusations of brutality, etc.)

He won over the police, won over the Republicans, and got the measure passed overwhelmingly (the vote in the Senate was 35-0) While being a state issue, carefully thinking through issues dealing with confessions and false confessions and abusing suspects certainly pertains to the national stage these days, doesn't it?

Here is a fuller description of how Obama's leadership led to the passage of the videotaping bill.

Another accomplishment while in the Illinois legislature was the passage of what the Washington Post called "the most ambitious campaign reform in nearly 25 years, making Illinois one of the best in the nation on campaign finance disclosure." Each party selected one member to represent their party. He was new in the state Senate, and the Democrats were in the minority then, but he was the D's point person.

There are more things he did in Illinois (and the criticism of Obama for voting "present" demonstrates a lack of understanding how the state legislature works in Illinois) but this is long enough and there is a lot more to talk about from the past four years in the US Senate.