Isn't "Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Bill Clinton's fault?

Bill Clinton had the authority to lift the ban on gays in the military by executive order. When he first took office, instead of doing this, he sent out this trialk balloon, and the right went nuts. It was like the world might come to an end. As a result, he entered the DADT comprimise with Republican's and spineless Democrats in Congress, where a law was made. In essence, he gave away some of his power at CIC. Now for it to be overturned it takes a vote in Congress.

At the time, Jimmy Carter said Clinton made a big mistake. He said he should have just signed the order, that the uproar would go away after a while. That is what Carter did when he pardoned all of the Vietnam era draft evaders who were up in Canada. The right went nuts for a week or so, and it was over.

I suspect this bill to repeal it will come up after the election in the lame duck session. I do not think 60 votes will be hard to find in the senate. I think Judd Gregg, Scott Brown, the two women from Maine, and possibly a few other Republican's will vote for the repeal. It may be a deal he has with some of them to hold this back until after November so that they do not get primary challenged.

Everything is Obama's fault.

Now get with the program!

I wish more people here would acknowledge that. We are in this conundrum because of bad and politically cowardly decisions by William Jefferson Clinton.

I thought they were shameful as was his inaction on Rwanda's genocide. I am gratified that he now has expressed his regrets about all of those decisions.

I have differences with Obama too. But nobody promised me a pony and I didn't expect that I would agree with every single thing Obama did. I still think he is a great president but I still reserve my right to dissent against what I consider wrong decisions on his part.

It's part of being a member of a healthy democracy and it's intrinsic to being a progressive. We're supposed to have independent minds and to think carefully about decisions made by our leaders.

We can have disagreements with our president. That's fine, but let's keep them within the confines of reason and not go flying off into ridiculous comparisons and crazy hyperbole...

Clinton is a fucking dickhead.

It seemed rather clever at the time though. People 'get used to' certain ideas as time passes and it always seems 'obvious' 20 years later. Same applies to civil and womens rights.

He could have either impemented the new policy of resigned.

If they were unlucky they were fragged.

Clinton did not have an "success" until the GOP took Congress in 1994. After that they were forced to work with Clinton to show things could get done. Clinton was in truth, an Eisenhower Republican. The Republican's found out in a hurry with that 1995 government shut down that they could no longer just say no.

I sense Obama may secretly want this as well. It seems easier to be a half assed Rockefeller Republican these days than a real Democrat.

Clinton signed a slew of bad laws in an effort to go along with Republican's. How did they reward him? They impeached him.

Health care is the most obvious. But there are many long term items that were passed in the stimulus or budget - high speed rail being one. He almost certainly will get a financial reform bill. The country is not the country of the 1930s, when the far deeper Depression was still happening, and he does not have most of the country behind him as FDR did.

I assume that Obama wants the best Congress he can get - with as many Democrats as possible.

The reaction was pretty stunning--things like an openly and proudly insubordinate Colin Powell invoking segregation-era arguments against changing the policy, members of Congress taking the media on tours of submarines and pointing out how crowded the accommodations were, members of the president's own party competing to see which could get the most knives in his back, etc.

This was in the respectable corporate media.

The situation on hate radio, of course, was even worse. It had a truly atavistic nastiness about it. There were even some high profile bashings near military bases then, not surprisingly, provoked by the Limbot warnings of an imminent gaypocalypse.

Even I was taken aback by it all, and I have absolutely no illusions about how most straight people feel about us.

I honestly think that Clinton thought eliminating the gay ban would be easy and was blindsided by the reaction. Then, as he was always inclined to do, and as Obama likewise does, he chose compromise over conflict, thus sticking us with DADT.

Clinton meant well, I think but you know what they say about good intentions.

support from the left while he was being attacked. I heard him say this in person.

Lots of people support us in the same casual hey-look-how-enlightened-I-am way that they believe in saving the whales and purchasing fair trade goods, but when it comes time for real commitment, they can't be bothered with our "little pet issues."

It just bothers me how absolutely ahistorical so much of the discussion of DADT is. There is a particular and very important context to the issue that tends to be ignored.

I recall distinctly the day when Clinton was preaching on tv about violence is not the answer when addressing Columbine murders... and meanwhile he was violently bombing, re: Kosovo, AS HE SPOKE

feh.

For example, I suspect Lindsey Graham probably is sympathetic to gay rights and probably does not like DADT. He was a military lawyer. That said, he is from redneck central. If he came out to overtly for gay rights he would be out on his ass. In 1993 you had the same situation with many of the southern Democrats.

and was profoundly disappointed in what Clinton did - thought it was immoral and unworkable and would lead to abuse and I have been proven right. But you are correct: People forget the context. The attacks were rabid and he compromised.

it showed the Republicans that he could be rolled, thus setting the tone for years to come.

There was a lot I liked about Clinton, but his endless compromising frustrated me. He seemed convinced that he could make his enemies love him if only he would give them what they wanted just one more time. He would knock his friends into the dirt in his rush to embrace those who despised him.

That sounds like someone else, come to think of it.

by contemporary standards.

I'm glad we agree.

:hi:

I was there too. He expressed more than a little anger at the left-wing base for not better backing him up. I thought that was rather unfair, as a large percentage of the people in that room weren't even close to being involved with politics back in 93/94.

Sorry didn't get to see you!

Yeah, he was being his grumpy self. And he was being probably overly defensive, but I believe the main point here is that people forget the context. Even I was shocked at the vehemence of the resistance to the change at the time. As I said in my other post, I thought he was wrong at the time, knew he was wrong at the time and have been proven right. But he did admit it was a big mistake on his part.

Also, he came in with just 43% of the popular vote. This uproar robbed him of almost all his political capital in less than two weeks. He had this, the loss of two Attorney General nominees, and the right already carping about "Whitewater." Clinton had the worst transition in modern history. They failed to fill hundreds of federal appointments, had to keep old man Bush's people as hold overs. It was really amateur hour.

As a result, Clinton's first yeat or so was a nightmare. He had the travel office fiasco, Vince Foster's suicide, Somalia, his staff getting caught taking a Marine helicopter to play golf, the Paula Jones suit, and the healthcare fiasco. Really, when you think about it, Obama's first year went pretty smooth.

The right at that point thought they owned the White House. They had won the last three presidential election, were really PO'd that Clinton won. They were going to impeach him at some point, I have no doubt.

And Sam Nunn was going to do that if Clinton signed the executive order (and maybe if he didn't). The Clinton Administration fucked up the strategy big time (and if you ask most of the people working in the Clinton White House as the time they will fully admit that). DADT was what we got and whether or not that is better or worse than what was in place before depends on your metric.

IMO the reason that Clinton was doomed to lose that fight was that he never served in the military. It was too easy for the right to paint it as an ultra liberal guy who never served enforcing his radical agenda on our brave men and women in uniform. IMO Obama faces the same problem because he's never served but it's less of a problem because the country has changed a lot since 1993. Unfortunately, Obama needs to get 60 votes in the Senate whereas Clinton only needed to get 44 to sustain a veto (or 146 in the House).

"Bill Clinton had the authority to lift the ban on gays in the military by executive order."

Clinton never had this authority. While the policy excluding gays from military service was, at that time, only a policy set by the White House under Reagan, legally speaking "sodomy" (meaning any type of non-coital sexual contact between two people) was and is against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Since a gay person would by definition have to break this in order to have sex at all, they would still be prosecutable whether the Commander-in-Chief said that gay people can serve openly or not. The CIC doesn't have the authority to change the UCMJ; that requires an act of Congress to remove the sodomy law provision. In effect, it would have created a situation where gay personnel could only serve if they were celibate.

Furthermore, Congress in 1993 passed language in the defense appropriations bill codifying the gay ban into law, effectively removing it from the president's discretion, and requiring an act of Congress to change.

When Clinton tried to sign the executive order, Sam Nunn (DINO) led a charge to pass a federal law banning gays in the military. He had the votes for a veto-proof majority, and Clinton was left facing a bill that would ban gays in the military altogether--not only making it a federal crime for a gay man or woman to serve, but making it harder to overturn the law in the future. Clinton's two choices were to sign the executive order and have a federal law negate it, or siphon off some of Nunn's support through a compromise that made things better than they had been while giving enough Democrats political cover to avoid voting for an outright ban.

As is often the case (DOMA, the IWR, for two examples), later analysts only see the bill as it exists, rather than seeing the events that led up to it. Clinton's choice was the most progressive option available, even if on paper it looks conservative. I think people have forgotten just how far to the right this nation was under Reagan/Bush, and how much further right the Gingrich Congress was about to push it. Clinton in terms of net gain probably moved us further left than any president in history, but we were so far to the right when he took over that it's hard to notice.

What you said is exactly what happened in 1993, but they rather have their poutage and blame Clinton for everything. They forget that Bill stuck his neck out and was beaten with a very heavy stick for it. BTW, the outrage at the time was not all from the conservative side. There were plenty of Democrats who didn't want it either.

Why do people always forget historical perspective? the set of circumstances in 1993 were not the same as they are now. The public now is much more accepting of lifting the ban and of gay marriage too.

:-(

So someone needs to tell it to them.

And historical persective is the enemy of absolutism, so a lot of people want to ignore it. Bettter to be a false martyr than a compromised achiever.

People would rather ascribe blame than learn the facts.

;(



:hi:

:) I'm weird like that.

Clinton did not want DADT. He was forced into a corner on it.

I was a bit older than you and Bill Clinton was the first president who I was enthusiastic about. I was also thrilled with his wife. Hillary was bright, spunky and didn't take crap from anyone. My kind of first lady.

:D



:pals:

I think many people complaining about Clinton already know what you posted to be true; they have ulterior motives.

- so the answer is YES.

or perhaps the SCOTUS.

Obama can only limit it effect, and to some extent some of that has already been done.

ofcourse the law would be better since it would prevent future presidents from changing the policy. But I dont see why he wouldn't sign the executive order while he waits for congress to act.

he can only temporarily make it somewhat moot.

I think you are splitting hairs.

an executive order means the law is not reversed...and I would think that more important than simply being able to serve in the Military while Gay would be the ability to overturn a bad law that discriminates; as that would be a much more substansive victory for equal rights. If Obama was to do an executive order, many would simply believe that to be enough and move on. In the way that Obama is aiming to deal with DADT in a long run, the law would be repealed and that repeal would be a true victory, rather than some technical way of avoiding what is on the books for the time being.

While he fights for the law in congress repeal it using executive order. If anything that will help congress as they will see it doesn't disrupt our armed forces in any way.

since one can infer anything. The military review that will come in late in the fall will be the official report that will clear the way for congress to repeal the law without leaving any doubt and leaving any ammunition for Republicans to use the Gay community as their weapon.

and probably not the next.

To do it the real, lasting way is to do it through Congress. He could do it temporarily right now. But that might lose some votes in Congress needed to overturn it. Truthfully, it needs to be done like yesterday.

Saying we want congress to do it seems like a big cop out to me.

Obama is cautiously trying to avoid a Sam Nunn situation in the Senate. Is he being too cautious? I think he may be.

If republicans wont vote for something then they simply wont vote for it, they dont need an excuse.

It was Colin Powell who crafted DADT. It was Powell who talked Clinton out of it. Clinton's problem, there, IMO, was that, right or wrong, he did not have much credibility with the military. I think he put too much credence into Powell's advice. Colin Powell was a disaster for this country and the fact that people though he brought any credibility to the SOS job was and is beyond me.

and I believe that this will be a much more substansive victory for equal rights when it happens.

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Clinton couldn't end the prohibition on gays any more than Obama could by executive order. Sodomy was then, and may still be now (depending on Lawerence v Texas) against the UCMJ. Clinton tried to do so, and the Congress made it crystal clear that there was no way that law would be changed and that instead they would outright ban gays. Much of his opposition came from Democrats as well as Republicans. DADT was added to the budget that year and passed by Congress to be signed by the President. Had that not happened the default would have been back to the witch hunts (to understand what those were like read Conduct Unbecoming). Since we weren't at war we couldn't use stop loss.

To compare the pardon power of the President, which is absolute and utterly unfettered by any control at all, to the power of executive orders shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the limits of the power of a President. Something I doubt Carter really did.

So afraid of offending some assholes, assholes BTW that hated him and would never, ever compromise with him, he condemns millions to their status as "others".

See the exact same shit happening today.
:grr: