Change You May or May Not Believe In

Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

If Democrats give in to the blackmailers now, they’ll just face more demands in the future. As long as Republicans believe that Mr. Obama will do anything to avoid short-term pain, they’ll have every incentive to keep taking hostages. If the president will endanger America’s fiscal future to avoid a tax increase, what will he give to avoid a government shutdown?

So Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now. If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is. Yes, letting taxes go up would be politically risky. But giving in would be risky, too — especially for a president whom voters are starting to write off as a man too timid to take a stand. Now is the time for him to prove them wrong.

Frank Rich in the New York Times:

The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.

Andrew Sullivan disagrees:

"Non-argumentative reasonableness" so far has prevented a second great depression, rescued Detroit, bailed out the banks, pitlessly isolated Tehran's regime, exposed Netanyahu, decimated al Qaeda's mid-level leadership in Pakistan and Afghanistan, withdrawn troops from Iraq on schedule, gotten two Justices on the Supreme Court, cut a point or two off the unemployment rate with the stimulus, seen real wages for those employed grow, presided over a stock market boom and record corporate profits, and maneuvered a GOP still intoxicated with failed ideology to become more and more wedded to white, old evangelicals led by Sarah Palin. And did I mention universal health insurance - the holy grail for Democrats for decades?

What do you say, guys?
 

What I Say:  The reason I supported Hillary all through the primaries was that she was the most experienced candidate:  she had been at the center of power, she knew the ropes, she knew the other side face to face.  Government doesn't operate on high-minded principles; it's a give-and-take web of personal relationships - sometimes hardball, sometimes cutthroat - like every other major entity in life.
 
Every few years at election time, people get their hopes up that some outsider with no connections and no influence and no relationships among the power brokers and wheeler-dealers will come into the Oval Office and "clean up the mess in Washington" - but it just doesn't work that way, and that's reality.
 
Meanwhile, all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
 

Angels in America

Judith and Samuel Peabody

. . . is the title of today's must-read Frank Rich column in the NYT.  Which is remarkable for two things:  first, his recounting of the story of Judith Peabody, socialite and early champion of the AIDS crisis, who died last week.  Read more about her wonderful life in the NYT's obituary article.  Thanks so much, Judith - I'm sure there's many stars in your crown.

The Rich article also has some very pertinent remarks on the Perry case and Judge Walker that you ought to check out.  Excerpt:

There has already been an attempt to discredit Walker, who has never publicly discussed his sexual orientation but has been widely reported to be gay. The notion that a judge’s sexuality, gay or not, might disqualify him from ruling on marriage is as absurd as saying Clarence Thomas can’t rule on cases involving African-Americans. By this standard, the only qualified judge to rule on marital rights would be a eunuch. No less ridiculous has been the attempt to dismiss Walker as a liberal “activist judge.” Walker was another Reagan nominee to the federal bench, recommended by his attorney general, Edwin Meese (an opponent of same-sex marriage and, now, of Walker), in a December 1987 memo residing at the Reagan library. It took nearly two years and a renomination by the first President George Bush for Walker to gain Senate approval over opposition from Teddy Kennedy, the N.A.A.C.P., La Raza, the National Organization for Women and the many gay groups who deemed his record in private practice too conservative.

The attacks on Walker have fizzled fast. With rare exceptions from the hysterical fringe — Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich — most political leaders have either remained silent about the Prop 8 decision (the Republican National Committee) or punted (the Obama White House). Over at Fox News, Ted Olson silenced the states’-rights argument in favor of Prop 8 last weekend by asking Chris Wallace: “Would you like Fox’s right to a free press put up to a vote and say, well, if five states have approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do?” (No answer was forthcoming.)

Most of those who do argue for denying marriage equality to gay couples are now careful to say that they really, really like gay people. This, like the states’-rights argument, is a replay of the battle over black civil rights. Eric Foner, the pre-eminent historian of Reconstruction, recalled last week via e-mail how Strom Thurmond would argue in the early 1960s “that segregation benefited blacks and whites and had nothing to do with racism” — as if inequality were O.K. as long as segregationists pushing separate-but-equal “compromises” claimed their motives were pure.

What I Say:  The other day a famous gay blogger slimed a less-famous but well-respected conservative gay journalist as a "quisling" - for the mere reason that Maggie Gallagher's National Organization for Marriage used a quote from the latter as part of a statement against same-sex marriage; in the excerpt they quoted he was favoring civil unions as a more winnable achievement.

Which ignores the fact that this writer has written numerous articles, and an entire book for that matter, arguing the case for gay marriage.  And in fact did marry his partner earlier this year in D. C.  So, far from being a traitor to our cause, he is indeed working on the same team - with us, not against us.  Having read his blog articles many times in the past, I believe this conservative blogger is making the case for achieving a solid, permanent goal of equal marriage rather than a Pyrrhic victory that will remain questioned and unsettled in the public mind for years to come, like Roe v. Wade.

Which is a legitimate concern, and a worthy subject for discussion and debate; and while your Head Trucker wants to see equal marriage the law of the land in this country as quick as we can get it, I also admire greatly anyone who can make a clear, cogent case for something in impeccable English, based on logical reasoning and a command of all the relevant facts.  It's important to consider carefully who is and who is not the enemy.  As Frank Rich makes clear in his column, Walker's nomination was fiercely opposed by gay groups at the time - but supposing they had succeeded in blocking his appointment to the bench?  Where would we be today with the Perry case, under some other judge, eh?

Of course, even reasonable people with a fine command of facts, logic, and language can still disagree on ways and means to a worthwhile goal - and what seems best at one moment in history may be found later to have been an honestly mistaken view; that's the whole idea subsumed in the concept of freedom of speech, which is the very bedrock of our frame of government and democratic society:  the lifeblood of our body politic.  Disagree if you like with someone's conclusions, but disagree with respect for the other guy's character, if not his point of view.

If you are going to claim American values, it's important to live them yourself.  Otherwise, you are morally on the same level with the enemies of individual liberty.  You want freedom for yourself, you must want it for others as well - or you are simply being a self-centered hypocrite. Acting the part of a nasty brat.

Which is what your mama and daddy were trying to get across to you when they made you share your cookies with the other kids, and not wolf down the whole box all by yourself, ya know?

Casualities of the Culture Wars

Hey guys, you have to check out Frank Rich's brilliant summation of George Reker's obscene hypocrisy in the NYT, along with some very perceptive observations on sex, hypocrisy, and the culture wars.  Excerpt:

OF all wars, only culture wars offer the hope of sheer, unadulterated hilarity. Sex and hypocrisy were staples of farce long before America became a nation, and they never go out of style. Just listen to the roaring audience at the new hit Broadway revival of the perennial “La Cage aux Folles,” where a family-values politician gets his comeuppance in drag. Or check out the real-life closet case of George Rekers, who has been fodder for late-night television comics all month. . . .

But once we stop laughing, we must remember that culture wars are called wars for a reason. For all the farcical shenanigans they can generate, they do inflict real casualties — both at the micro level, on the lives of ordinary people, and at the national level, where, as we’re seeing right now, a Supreme Court nominee’s entire record can be reduced to a poisonous and distorted debate over her stand on the single culture-war issue of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” . . .

By late last week, double-entendre wisecracks about Kagan’s softball prowess were all the rage on Fox News and MSNBC. These dying gasps of our culture wars, like Rekers’s farcical pratfall, might be funnier if millions of gay Americans and their families were not still denied their full civil rights.

Frank Rich: La Cage aux Democrats

On account of my trip last week, I missed posting this excerpt from a great NYT op-ed by Frank Rich - go read the whole thing, he really tells it like it is. After noting the growing acceptance across the nation of gay rights, gay marriage, and even, golly, Adam Lambert, Rich says:

This rapid change has been greeted not by a backlash, but by a national shrug — just as a seemingly gay “American Idol” victory most likely would have been.

And yet the changes aren’t coming as fast as many gay Americans would like, and as our Bill of Rights would demand. Especially in Washington. Despite Barack Obama’s pledges as a candidate and president, there is no discernible movement on repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy or the Defense of Marriage Act. Both seem more cruelly discriminatory by the day. . . .

Worse, Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage is now giving cover to every hard-core opponent of gay rights, from the Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean to the former Washington mayor Marion Barry, each of whom can claim with nominal justification to share the president’s views.

In reality, they don’t. Obama has long been, as he says, a fierce advocate for gay equality. The Windy City Times has reported that he initially endorsed legalizing same-sex marriage when running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996. The most common rationale for his current passivity is that his plate is too full. But the president has so far shown an impressive inclination both to multitask and to argue passionately for bedrock American principles when he wants to. Relegating fundamental constitutional rights to the bottom of the pile until some to-be-determined future seems like a shell game.

As [Evan] Wolfson reminds us in his book “Why Marriage Matters,” Dr. King addressed such dawdling in 1963. “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait,’ ” King wrote. “It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ ”

The gay civil rights movement has fewer obstacles in its path than did Dr. King’s Herculean mission to overthrow the singular legacy of slavery. That makes it all the more shameful that it has fewer courageous allies in Washington than King did. If “American Idol” can sing out for change on Fox in prime time, it ill becomes Obama, of all presidents, to remain mute in the White House.

David Mixner posted a copy of the 1996 letter on his blog a while back - signed by, you know, that guy who made all those speeches about Change We Can Believe In - ? Read it for yourself:


Mr. Obama, you want to be Lincoln, but are you just another Buchanan? Adam captures my feelings on this:

We're Likable Enough, But . . .

Frank Rich writes this column in the New York Times today, "You're Likable Enough, Gay People":

As we saw during primary season, our president-elect is not free of his own brand of hubris and arrogance, and sometimes it comes before a fall: “You’re likable enough, Hillary” was the prelude to his defeat in New Hampshire. He has hit this same note again by assigning the invocation at his inauguration to the Rev. Rick Warren, the Orange County, Calif., megachurch preacher who has likened committed gay relationships to incest, polygamy and “an older guy marrying a child.” Bestowing this honor on Warren was a conscious — and glib — decision by Obama to spend political capital. It was made with the certitude that a leader with a mandate can do no wrong.

In this case, the capital spent is small change. Most Americans who have an opinion about Warren like him and his best-selling self-help tome, “The Purpose Driven Life.” His good deeds are plentiful on issues like human suffering in Africa, poverty and climate change. He is opposed to same-sex marriage, but so is almost every top-tier national politician, including Obama. Unlike such family-values ayatollahs as James Dobson and Tony Perkins, Warren is not obsessed with homosexuality and abortion. He was vociferously attacked by the Phyllis Schlafly gang when he invited Obama to speak about AIDS at his Saddleback Church two years ago.

There’s no reason why Obama shouldn’t return the favor by inviting him to Washington. But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.” . . .

Warren’s defamation of gay people illustrates why, as does our president-elect’s rationalization of it. When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.

It is even more toxic in a year when that group has been marginalized and stripped of its rights by ballot initiatives fomenting precisely such fears. “You’ve got to give them hope” was the refrain of the pioneering 1970s gay politician Harvey Milk, so stunningly brought back to life by Sean Penn on screen this winter. Milk reminds us that hope has to mean action, not just words.

By the historical standards of presidential hubris, Obama’s disingenuous defense of his tone-deaf invitation to Warren is nonetheless a relatively tiny infraction. It’s no Bay of Pigs. But it does add an asterisk to the joyous inaugural of our first black president. It’s bizarre that Obama, of all people, would allow himself to be on the wrong side of this history.