I don't think I fetishize liberty over other values irrationally. And I'm not sure where that impression comes from. The only thread I can recall you participating in where my defense of liberty was too much for you was in my belief that smoking should not be banned in private businesses. I don't know how you would box me into a Nozickean minarchist from that.
I guess because the OP was about economic policy, I thought your criticism of Obama was along those lines. I have more time for this kind of criticism of Obama
My criticism of Obama as a president would be quite lengthy and would include economic policy. I actually liked Obama as a candidate relative to Clinton because he was surrounded by moderate University of Chicago types (Goolsbee, etc.) and thought that would bode well given the options. As it happened, he pushed those people to the back once in office and adopted Clintonian policy instead.
We probably could start by not opening up other Gauntanamo-like places and black sites.I'll also add that I don't come down very hard on Obama for his apparently right-wing terror policies because I think he's mostly boxed in by how the wars have been fought -- e.g., there's just not a pretty solution to Guantanamo at this point -- and by institutional pressures on the office he holds. Except for some legitimate criticisms around the edges, I don't see anyone making a credible case for doing things differently while still being able to preside effectively.
This would be more believable if Obama hasn't worked very hard to ossify and extend the more troubling aspects of the Bush regime's "war on terror" civil rights problems. He's not just failing to deconstruct his predecessor's actions, he's worsening them. In the two examples I listed above, Bush did not and would not have the audacity to argue either. His belief that the president can invoke national security secrecy to shield the government from any judicial review is slightly more expansive than Cheney's and renders the president effectively above the law. Nixon certainly wouldn't have had anything to worry about if Obama's views on presidential powers were accepted. And I suspect if George W. Bush was on record, as the Obama administration is, of attempting to assassinate U.S. citizens in a cloak of secrecy with no charges, much less reviewable evidence, you'd be calling for his impeachment over that fact alone.
And while it may be the case that doing things like prosecuting architects of US war crimes or not standing in the way of other nations attempting to do the same might harm his ability to forward a domestic agenda, it's not like Obama has stopped there. And I'm not just talking about crushing civil suits as well. His administration has thrown the book at any whistle-blower on the government's abuses and tried hard to intimidate journalists from using those sources. That's completely unnecessary if his goal was simply to avoid political blowback. Also, the administration is continuing the engage in torture by proxy and, at least in the case of Bradley Manning, probably torture directly. So even promises to stop that were empty.
Now you might instead be saying that the president couldn't manage the security threat the US faces he he didn't do this. The president needs to invoke secrecy doctrines to conceal legal memos setting forth its highly expansive, but not entirely known views of its own domestic warrantless surveillance powers. The president needs to use legislative arm-twisting of his own party push through a 4 year extension of the PATRIOT act without any amendments or reform. But, if you think that, then I think you just need to accept that you support those policies and we should have an argument over that, not whether Obama's hands are tied.