Obama sides with Bush… again

There was a pretty short list of crap that we expected from President Obama once he took office. Aside from the expectations that the sky would rain money and everyone would link hands and sing kumbayah while our soldiers all exchanged guns for gumdrops and teddy bears, there were some realistic things. Y’know, like, not agreeing with Bush’s flagship examples of executive overreach.

Well, shit.

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails in a stunning reversal of Obama’s rhetoric about Bush secrecy on the campaign trail.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President, including one of the groups that helped derail former House Speaker Tom DeLay, say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush’s eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration’s bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

I’m not sure if I’m the only one who’s realized this, but there is one attack that the Republicans are practically drooling over come 2012, and that’s the ability to point and yell “See? You all thought he was going to change things, he’s just a standard politician like everyone else!”

When your message is built chiefly on hope and change, the one thing you don’t want to do is continue the policies that most enraged the people and caused them to vote for you. It’s a surefire way to tank your re-election aspirations if at the end of four years people look back and say “well damn, he didn’t actually change anything.” Obama’s rhetoric has been a lot less fiery on Iraq and this isn’t helping matters.