The worst part is we had no real choice, at all. In Bush's case, at least he could say, “I'm the tough-on-terrror candidate. In the tradeoff between security and liberty, I favor security.” That's how he was positioned. By electing him, it was understood at some level that this is what we as a country were choosing.

Obama took the other side of this argument. A vote for him was a vote for favoring the liberty side of that tradeoff. His actions in office are a clear demonstration that we can't translate our widely held preferences into implementation through the mechanism of our election system.