Lt Col Leslie Pratt/U.S. Air Force, via Reuters

During the 2012 campaign, President Obama and Vice President Biden and many other people, including our editorial page writers, pointed out that Mitt Romney’s campaign boiled down to one proposition: Just trust me.

After Mr. Romney refused to provide real details about his taxes, his wife, Ann, told NBC News that voters “have to understand that Mitt is honest. His integrity is just golden.” Obviously Democrats weren’t satisfied with such empty guarantees, and hammered away at the idea that professions of honesty are no substitute for actual disclosure. Jim Messina, the Obama campaign manager, accused Mr. Romney of putting “his personal financial assets in a black box” and hiding the key.

The campaign, thankfully, is long over. But the “just trust me” tactic is alive and well: It’s how the Obama administration is handling its “targeted killing” policy, which we wrote about on today’s editorial page.



The Obama administration has repeatedly refused even to acknowledge killing Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, in a drone strike. It has also refused to disclose the legal documents explaining why the executive branch has the power to order an American killed without telling Congress, getting permission from a judge, or submitting the action to Congressional, legal or public review after the fact.

It even refused to make public an unclassified summary of the argument that was sent to the top two members of the House and Senate judiciary committees last May, seven months after Mr. Awlaki was killed. The only reason we can now read that document is that NBC News got hold of it and published it on Monday.

Now that we’ve seen it I can report that the legal argument itself is all about trust. We’re supposed to accept that if an “informed, high-ranking official” decides that an American citizen poses an “imminent threat” to this country and that capture is not possible, it’s OK to order a drone strike. It would be bad enough if administration personnel were using the standard definition of “imminent,” but they have vastly expanded it to include people that they “know” would be attacking us if they could.

We are supposed to trust them to make life-and-death decisions without any independent oversight. To trust that appropriate safeguards are in place. White House officials have told me that they have a review system, but the overseers are all executive branch officials and we are never going to be told who they are or how they do the overseeing. Their contempt for the idea that the courts should have a say is palpable.

We’ve been here before, with President George W. Bush, who told us to trust him after 9/11 and gave us illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, rendition, indefinite detention, torture, military trials and Guantanamo Bay. And that’s just what we know about.

We argued at the time that we are supposed to be a nation of laws, not personalities, and that powers, once acquired, are never given up. Mr. Obama denounced Mr. Bush’s actions during the 2008 campaign but upon taking office pursued the same abuse of the state secrets privilege in court cases involving rendition, torture and indefinite detention.

Just as Mr. Bush decided that his constitutional powers and the Congressional authorization for war in Afghanistan gave him the authority to tap our phones without a warrant and to approve the torture of prisoners, Mr. Obama decided he had the power to order the killing of Americans. He does not even think enough of the American people to come before them and explain his decision.