I said the same thing during Obama's campaign. The campaign trail is always full of idealism but once the President elect enters office there will be forces greater than his ideology that will make him succumb to the status quo.
I do find there is an important difference between Bush and Obama though. Bush found new use for Gitmo, reinvented the term "enemy combatant", and used the tribunal system to his administration's advantage. This is the framework that Obama has inherited and, once on the inside, has found that it's not a simple matter of signing paper and making it go away. It is the legacy of almost a decade of policy making.
So while you can blame Obama for maintaining it you can't blame him for its invention. I do agree through that partisan hacks have a hard time looking at the big picture, and those who formerly threw stones are now on the receiving end. Both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of this. On the non-partisan side of things, it's just a failure of the imagination... people don't realize that what is said on the campaign trail is not bound by contract and the politicians don't have to fulfill one damn word they said.
I see it as more of a reality check.
Our politicians are quick to wreck each other's reputations just to appear better than their neighbor. But the grand difference between the protestor/lower tier politician and the President is that the President no longer has the luxury of standing behind a pulpet preaching about perfect morality while not having to make the tough decisions.
A President has to consider greater things when staring at genocide and suffering while the opposite Party has the luxury of ridiculing inaction. A President has to let the military loose knowing that collateral damage is and will always be a by product while the opposite Party sheds crocodile tears on camera for the dead civilians. And Bush may have started up "GITMO," but he didn't have the luxury of pretending that he could take his time and trust the humane side of humanity when the possibles and probables began to be captured.
Clinton was the first to defy the UN. He kicked them out of the Bosnia campaign and the UN considered intervention in Kosovoa as "illegal." Did the Democrats complain about "soveriegnty" and join the UN in protest then? And while Clinton was trying to convince Americans that our future threat was going to be the tribe or the terrorist organization as he took steps to kill Osama Bin Laden, the morons were more interested in Monika Lewinski.
The American people dissapoint me often. Few are tuned in and many of those that are, seek a politician to be straight with them instead of looking at the issues for themselves. And in the end, it's never their fault for choosing to be ignorant, but the politician who "lied" to them or didn't spoon feed them properly. Somehow, Americans feel that if they aren't given all the information when they want it about everything, then they are being lied to or that somehting must be amiss. But the fact is that Americans have to accept that our government does things that are none of their business because in the end, what the everyday Internet surfing American knows, the enemy knows too. Dudes are on Twitter.
President Obama will do what he feels is necessary to deal with not only the "War on Terror" but the entire region in which our enemies are born and bred in great numbers. This means that despite his campaign personality of smiles, hugs, and rainbows, he will be making the tough decisions that go along with the very same effort we've been party too since 9/11.
And how many Americans will simply drool and choose to remain in the dark as they seek one topic to the next to either protest or ignore according to who's guy sits upon high?
