In today’s New York Times, Ross Douthat argues that the overlap in foreign policies between George W. Bush and Barack Obama is substantial. It’s a point that can’t be repeated too often: 

Imagine, for a moment, that these were George W. Bush’s policies at work. A quest for regime change in Libya, conducted without even a pro forma request for Congressional approval. A campaign of remote-controlled airstrikes, in which collateral damage is inevitable, carried out inside a country where we are not officially at war. A policy of targeted assassination against an American citizen who has been neither charged nor convicted in any U.S. court.

Imagine the outrage, the protests, the furious op-eds about right-wing tyranny and neoconservative overreach. Imagine all that, and then look at the reality. For most Democrats, what was considered creeping fascism under Bush is just good old-fashioned common sense when the president has a “D” beside his name.

Perhaps the best example of this phenomenon is the widespread celebration of the “SEAL Team 6” that killed Osama, which Seymour Hersch labeled an “executive assassination squad” when it was associated with Dick Cheney.