Like a lot of two-term presidents nearing the last bend in the road, Barack Obama seems guided by equal parts conviction and whimsy these days, without much regard for political consequence. The president has expounded publicly on race and political civility, shaken hands with a Cuban Castro, commuted a slew of sentences for drug offenders, plunged the federal government into the debate over transgender Americans in restrooms. Obama clearly isn’t going to declassify the full text of the Senate’s mammoth, landmark report on torture, and maybe that’s the right call — I don’t know.
