Don't Ask, DOMA Tell

I intended to start this post by saying that the Obama administration's approach to gay rights was "rather pathetic." Maybe "pretty pathetic." After careful consideration, I realized neither was correct. There's no need for the modifier.

It was bad enough when apathy was the order of the day of the White House. After promising to repeal the odious Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, Obama took no steps toward fulfilling those pledges during his first months in the Oval Office. There were a few symbolic measures. But the administration did nothing to indicate that its devotion to gay rights extended beyond the kind of vague philosophical inclinations expressed by a reluctant college freshman in his first public speaking course.

If apathy was bad, outright hostility was even worse. When a gay California couple, married during the brief period after the legalization of gay marriage in that state but before the passage of Proposition 8, challenged the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court, the Obama Department of Justice filed a brief in support of DOMA. That was troublesome, but, arguably, necessary; several legal theorists have said that the administration is obligated to defend existing federal law, even while working to change it. What was not necessary were invocations of old cases arguing that states didn't need to recognize marriages between blood relatives. It goes without saying that many found those arguments and the implicated comparisons offensive.

Finally and fortunately the administration's attitude has come back to bite it. Several wealthy gay donors have withdrawn from an upcoming DNC fundraiser in protest. When you're trying to send a message to a political party, there's no better weapon than the checkbook.

Look, I'm an idealist, but I'm not that stupid. Obama doesn't support gay marriage, and I know that. I knew it during the last days of the campaign when I was slinging door knockers in Independence, Missouri. So it's impossible to be disappointed about that stance; disapppointment requires a measure of surprise.

And while it offends me that DOMA still befouls the Federal Register, again, I'm not disappointed. I fully expected Obama to slow walk any attempt to repeal DOMA. The bill was passed with substantial Democratic support and signed by a Democratic president. Repealing it would be a brutal, bruising fight, and it seems like Obama doesn't have the chin for many of those.

But there will never be a better time to move on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The President remains deeply popular with the American people. I'd like to think that can last another eight years, but those poll numbers are going to take a hit once the administration dives into the trenches on worthy issues like health care and the budget. The White House has to take advantage of the President's popularity while it remains robust. And don't talk to me about "political capital," because that's not actually a thing. Regardless of what you've read on the standard lefty websites, the US Senate is not the Mafia. It doesn't work on a one-to-one favor swapping system.

A Gallup poll indicates that nearly 70 percent of Americans support repealing the ban on openly gay soldiers. 58 percent of conservatives agree with that. It would take some skill to frame the debate as a national security issue instead of a pure gay rights issue, but we're talking about a President who made a 28-minute speech on race into a YouTube sensation. Communication is kind of the guy's thing. The White House should show faith in his ability to convince Americans that we do not make our country safer by discharging linguists who speak Arabic.

I have faith that the President is personally a tolerant and empathetic man who treats homosexuals with the respect they deserve as human beings. But that's not enough. At some point you have to do something.

If the President is backtracking on DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell because he realizes his campaign pledges were wrong and he now believes DOMA is a good bill and DADT a good policy, then I respect that. But if you're doing it 'cause you think it's gonna be too hard or you think you're gonna lose...well, God, Barack, I don't even want to know you.

Stimulating Thoughts

Being President is hard. George Bush made darn sure you knew that during the 2004 election, but on the off chance you've either forgotten that election or made the conscious decision to wipe it from your mind, the debate over Barack Obama's $800+ billion stimulus package is a nice reminder.

On the one side, Obama's got a Nobel Prize winning economist repeatedly taking a piece of rebar to his kneecaps on the op-ed page of The New York Times because the package isn't big enough. (Hehehehe) On the other side, he's got an increasingly conservative Republican Party raising hell about every red cent of government spending in the bill. And he's not getting help from the media, which has given the anti-stimulus crowd ample time to air their grievances.

All of which is annoying enough for a standard-issue President, but it's doubly vexing for a man who ran on the idea of bi-partisan cooperation. He quite sincerely wants Republican votes for this bill. That might be for strictly political reasons, or it might be because he legitimately values the opposition's input, but regardless, he has assiduously courted their support.

Here's the thing: it hasn't worked. Obama and his partisans in the House made a number of concessions in an effort to win some GOP support. They threw in more than $300 billion in tax cuts, both as a sop to the Republicans and in order to fulfill some of Obama's campaign promises. They excised some of the "wasteful" spending in the bill, such as $200 million to repair the unimportant National Mall. They cut out the odious, burdensome $200 million that would have helped poor women purchase icky contraceptives.

And for all that, not a single Republican Congressman voted for the stimulus package. This is the reality Obama's facing. The newly elected head of the Republican National Committee praised his colleagues in the House for the "goose egg" they "laid on the President's desk." He has said that "no government in the history of mankind has ever created a job." The Republicans remaining in Washington are simply not inclined to get behind anything Obama proposes.

You could argue that the GOP's non-support in the House was pure obstructionism, a political middle finger raised in defiance at the new guy in the White House. But I'm inclined to be generous, and I think what we saw in the House was simply a dramatic manifestation of the philosophy that reigns in the party. These are deeply conservative men in deeply conservative districts, and they don't believe the federal government should spend money on anything beyond national defense and a big wall along the Mexican border to keep out illegals.

The Senate's a slightly different animal, in that there remains a core of moderate Republicans (Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, etc) who can be won over by the right stimulus bill. And theoretically Obama needs a couple of those names to reach a filibuster proof super-majority.

I get that Obama wants to be bi-partisan, and the Democrats absolutely should be prepared to compromise on some issues. But at some point you have to dig in your heels. If you don't, and you start selling for scrap the infrastructure spending and environmental friendly changes that form the very foundation of the bill, then you have to wonder what the point of being a Democrat is if you're not willing to act like one.

The Democrats have 58 votes. (Counting Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, and if Lieberman's not on board with this, someone really needs to stick Harry Reid in cryogenic stasis until future doctors come up with a way to surgically implant spines) You should be able to induce two Republicans to support a stimulus package containing large amounts of infrastructure spending and green improvements.

If you can't, if the GOP threatens a filibuster, then the answer should be simple: go ahead. Dare the Republicans to bottle up the "national recovery package" because they don't want to repair bridges and fill potholes. That will require some measure of message savvy, but not that much. Certainly not anything more than Obama's people have already displayed.

Reid needs to dare the GOP to actually filibuster the stimulus. Force them to make that decision. See if two of their number will crumble and vote for cloture and let the bill come up for debate. If they don't, then let Jim DeMint and Mitch McConnell stand on the floor of the United States Senate and expound on their anti-government philosophy.

You just won an election. The President recently pointed that out in one of his more eloquent moments: "I won." Act like it.

I Hate Agreeing With David Brooks

But unfortunately, I think he's largely correct with this column.

It wouldn't be a David Brooks column if it didn't include some questionable, sweeping generalizations. But I've spent enough attacking Brooks over the last several months, so I'll instead emphasize that I too am wary of the proposed bailout of the Big Three US automakers.

Unlike Brooks, I haven't made up my mind. He acknowledges that this is "an excruciatingly hard call." Millions of Americans make their living off the auto industry, from the UAW employees in Detroit to that annoying jackass who runs the local Ford dealership and invades your TV with poorly shot commercials where he hunts and kills large prices like he's in a Discovery Channel documentary.

And considering the state of the economy, the last thing this country needs are millions of unemployed auto workers, many of whom are older and don't have the kind of educational background and skillset that would allow them to find better jobs. It's easy to look down from on high, shrug your shoulders and say, "This is how capitalism works, kiddies. Bad companies fail, employees get fired. Sucks to be you. Have some unemployment compensation."

But, well, this kind of is how capitalism works. Ford, GM and Chrysler have been getting their asses kicked by Honda and Toyota for as long as I've been alive. The Japanese have continued to churn out better, cheaper, more fuel-efficient cars, while the American companies have been content to engage in an SUV arms race to see who can build the ungainliest manhood replacement. The market has spoken, and it's punishing the Big Three for their arrogance and willful ignorance.

The day those companies officially die (or, perhaps, file for bankruptcy) will certainly be a sad one, and there will be a lot of black crepe paper strewn about the capital to mourn the end of an era. But that is, I suppose, the downside of a free market. Previously good companies are mercilessly destroyed when competitors evolve. Good men are thrown out of work through no fault of their own. A city suffers. A national mythos long nurtured is rendered quaint.

I don't envy President-Elect Obama this decision, and I understand the inclination to help America's automakers. But I just can't get behind the idea of throwing billions at companies that are suffering because of their own mistakes.

The Head Scratcher

Bizarre, bizarre day on the campaign trail. I wanted to wait a few hours for things to settle down so I could survey the damage; I can do that since I'm not in this to be your one-stop shop for all the breaking political news. I recommend Talking Points Memo or Salon for that.

First, the Times reported that the Bush administration had caved on its bailout package and was willing to limit executive compensation for those companies that participated in the plan. For awhile that looked like the dominant story. Later stories indicated that a preferred version of the package floating around the House included several amendments demanded by the Democratic majority.

Then, John McCain took the extraordinary step of suspending his campaign and calling for a postponement of Friday's presidential debate. The reason? McCain feels like the country would be better served if he winged his way back to Washington to work on the bailout package, a bailout package that seemed to be slowly, but steadily, working its way through the legislative process.

Then the Obama campaign alleged that it was Obama who reached out early in the day to try and forge some kind of joint statement for the two campaigns. Obama said in a news conference that he wanted the debate to go ahead as planned. It was, I thought, a good response, echoing something I was ineloquently saying on another board:

“This is exactly the time when people need to hear from the candidates,” Mr. Obama said.

He added: “Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever.”

The McCain camp then said their candidate would unilaterally skip the debate if a bill was not passed by Friday at 9 PM. Harry Reid said McCain and Obama weren't needed in the capital.

About an hour ago, Obama and McCain both accepted invitations from the president to attend a White House briefing tomorrow.

Deep breath now.

McCain's massive gamble is the story here. What he's trying to do is cast himself as the patriotic statesman, abandoning a selfish campaign to return to his job and save America from a second Great Depression. Barack Obama, in contrast, will continue to plow ahead with his individual desires, forgetting his country and putting himself first. It's a familiar play; the McCain campaign has staged several of those during the election season, and they're getting pretty good at the blocking of it. It's usually part of a double feature with "Bitching About the Media."

But this is a different issue. The American people don't really care about what's said in a presidential debate, barring some kind of extraordinary gaffe or witty rejoinder. But they're deeply attached to the idea of the debates, the theater of them. As Obama points out, this is a moment when people really do want and need to hear from the country's two most important politicians. (Sit down, Mr. President.)

McCain might be able to cajole Obama and the Commission on Presidential Debates into delaying Friday's debate, possibly pushing it back to the date currently occupied by the Vice Presidential affair. I hope Obama stands firm on this, and I suspect he will.

Here's McCain's quandary: he cannot, cannot, cannot unilaterally withdraw from that debate. He cannot allow Obama to stand alone on a stage and answer questions from Jim Lehrer. So he better hope the Congress has a bailout passed. I suspect he has reason to believe that'll be the case.

My guess? We'll have our debate. Obama won't officially suspend his campaign, but he'll fly up to Washington, do the Senator thing, get his photo taken huddled with white-haired economists and do his debate prep in the evening. McCain will do much the same.

In A Shocking Development...

Democrats Cave on Offshore Drilling.

You know, I sometimes wonder what the point of possessing a Congressional majority is when said majority bends over every time the Republicans say "boo."

I agree with Alex Koppelman over at Salon's War Room when he says that he doesn't know who this helps in the election. It does seem to rob McCain and Palin of their insipid, slightly creepy "Drill, baby, drill!" catch phrase, but, as Koppelman points out, it seems to lend credibility to Republican charges that Democrats are weak and spineless. If you can't stand up to John Boehner, how can you expect the public to show faith in your ability to stand up to Vladimir Putin?

McCain to Abandoned Children: Enjoy the Orphanage!

McCain: I'm a Roosevelt Conservative

Interview Transcript

John McCain sat down in Hudson, Wisconsin with New York Times reporters Adam Nagourney and Michael Cooper to talk about his brand on conservatism. In it, he rejects the "Goldwater conservative," "Reagan conservative" or "George W. Bush conservative" labels and instead calls himself a "Roosevelt conservative." (That's Theodore and not Franklin, in case you were wondering)

There's nothing particularly objectionable here. Well, OK, that's not quite true; I'm a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat. Naturally I disagree with a lot of what McCain says in the interview. But there's not much in the transcript that offends me. It's a pretty standard series of Republican responses, though McCain seems more willing to accept an active federal government than some in his party would like.

There was, however, one exchange I found more than troubling. From the transcript:

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple

Mr. McCain: Yes.

Excuse my bluntness, but this position is cruel and loathsome, and the only thing more appalling than McCain's expression of it is the fact that it won't garner any real attention on the campaign trail. McCain seems to go out of his way to avoid supporting an outright ban on gay adoption, but there's no way to read that exchange as being anything other than completely hostile to homosexuals.

Look, I'm dramatically more liberal on gay issues than the vast majority of Americans. I get that. I support gay marriage, but I can understand why that's a difficult issue for a lot of people. Marriage is an ancient tradition, with a long-established one man/one woman dynamic. I'm willing to accept that others might be unwilling to alter that dynamic in an effort to adapt to modern sensibilities. I disagree, but it's a difficult problem.

Adoption, by contrast, is not some sacred religious tradition tracing back through millennia. Adoption is a vital institution, but it is not one with a death grip on our soul. A ban on homosexual adoption falls under the same category as the older attempts to prohibit gays from teaching in public schools. At best, such a proposal comes from someone desperate to appeal to those ignorant enough to fear that a gay parent or teacher is inclined to acts of pedophilia. Far worse, and far more likely, is that such a proposal is fueled by hate and nothing else.

I'm not sure which is McCain's category. Later in the interview he expresses his distaste for gay marriage, but also says he considers it a state issue. (McCain did vote for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996) One hopes that President McCain wouldn't support a federal law banning gay adoption, though as far as I'm aware there's little to no talk of such a law.

The problem, however, is that President McCain would veto such a law not out of a respect for the humanity and decency of gay Americans, but because it violates his conception of federalism. In other words, the classic case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. Based on this interview, it certainly seems like John McCain possesses the kind of distaste for homosexuals that has long poisoned American life.