MONICA GOODLING: I DID IT, NOT MY BOSS
I'm kinda standing back, while AS's blog gets a little overwrought, as he tries to make this distinction between Obama's high-road and Obama supporters' low-road work.
All I want to remind the next generation of gays about is: don't ever expect anything more than "just politics" from the Clintons.-AS
THE ROAD NOT TRAVELED? - PICTURE PLEASE
Specifically, with respect to DOMA, I'm interested in what the "non politics", alternate Universe looked like / looks like, to those who really do feel so let-down by Bill Clinton on the topic. What ought to have happened to thwart the (panic) forces that created the need for DOMA? What would have been the consequences / benefits of having handled it in the "ideal way", the non-political way (I guess).
THE POLITICS OF PRINCIPLE - HARD OR BRITTLE?
As for advertising DOMA, celebrating it, that's a wholly different matter. That's ugly. Still, I sense that AS is mostly upset that Bill Clinton, whose experience with rural and the Southern politics provides an understanding of the limits of, er... latte liberalism. Besides, why is it so clear that gays are the ones who are duped by use of this ad? (It's not like gays aren't close to Hillary - she's entrusted part of her key operations to one).
Still, who can support that kind of politics, altogether, even if it "works", for a time? It's too dangerous. Like Bush's failure, it risks putting the politics of power ahead of the politics of principle, compromising core democratic values. Can you think of any political party that hasn't done it, over any meaningful period of time? "Principle" is almost always subordinated to politics, and "politics" lags social changes and consensus, it doesn't often lead it. Being "right" is being popular, in Washington.
There is no magic bullet. But that doesn't mean we cannot look for magical people, those with some transformative potential, even if it comes in odd or unexpected places (in 1960, would you have bet that Lyndon Johnson would be the President that signed The Civil Rights Act, for instance). On that score, Hillary may not be willing to take big political risks, risks that seem to have little payoff. Obama seems far more willing actively to try to change the terms of the debate, rather than simply take "opinion" as an input to a 'triangulation'.
A 'WINNING STRATEGY' - WHEN EXPERIENCE MATTERS
On the other hand, recognize that Obama has called for the total removal of DOMA.
Now, the legal-savvy pundits (including Chris Crain and Dale Carpenter) are intimating that removal of the current strictures in California only (by the courts) is a dangerous thing, because the majority can still punish the minority (with a Constitutional Amendment). So, how can it be that the gay community is ready to back an Obama Presidency, to pick the scabs of 1996, but cautious enough to suggest that a loss in California might be o.k.-for-now?
It does certainly seem like Obama's policy was drawn up on a green-board, without a sense for what the blowback might look like from even proposing anew that, say, the good-'ol-boys in Tennessee recognize the marriages of the "liberal snobs" of Massachusetts.
So, is Obama (and his party) really going to fight that fight, or has he too, set up AS to have "trusted", "endorsed", and ultimately feel ... unsatisfied, just in a different way?
