We've been writing a lot about civilian control of the military around DADT and the McChrystal thing here recently. In an interview with Gay City News, Rep. Anthony Weiner hits on exactly what I'm feeling with regard to the military's performance around DADT:
The congressman also cited the public discourse that ensued when the White House announced last month it had struck a compromise for allowing the House and Senate to adopt a plan for ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell even though a Pentagon Working Group has not yet completed its study of how to implement such a policy change. A day after the compromise was made public, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced their grudging acceptance of Congress' intentions, but some of the individual service chiefs offered dissents.
"Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter three days before the fucking vote, and you're the president of the United States," Weiner said. "That's insubordination. There was one hand clapping. It would be akin to the president of the United States announcing he supports school vouchers and the secretary of Education sending a letter three days before the vote to say, 'Oh no, don't do that.'"
Exactly right. I am glad Obama did the right thing and reasserted his authority as Commander in Chief this week. It's something I hope the Administration will move to do in the future on other issues when those who report to him end up contradicting him before Congress.
Weiner also gets at what many, I think, in the LGBT community find fault with the Administration over, which is a lack of leadership.
Weiner, who was a persistent critic of the administration for not pushing harder for a public option in the healthcare reform legislation enacted earlier this year, said Obama is too often reluctant to lead on critical issues.
"I think the president wants to do the right thing, but I think there is too much of a tendency in this administration to leave it to the legislators to do the right thing," he said. "The president talks about using political capital to get things done, but he's asking Congress to get it done."
Weiner noted the success two weeks earlier in winning Senate Armed Services Committee and full House approval of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell compromise, but also argued that moving the broader LGBT agenda will require assertive presidential leadership.
"We're in a good moment now, so I don't want to piss on anything," he said. "I will say that there is this general sense out there that he is not prepared to lead in the classic sense. He says, 'Okay, there are 218 votes, I'll sign it.' This is one of those issues that you need leadership on."
To quote our President and one of his favorite phrases, let me be clear with some caveats: I don't expect the Administration to be shouting from the rooftops on LGBT issues all the time. And if I were in his shoes, I wouldn't spend political capital on something that has no freaking chance of going anywhere, nor (as I wrote here) is it always possible to know when the Administration is working on your issue or not. But I haven't seen the President publicly or privately lift a finger on ENDA at all, which has been very close to passage all year, and not on DADT after his SOTU speech to the point of his Administration, via Gates, Mullen and the gang, actually being detrimental (until the last minute when it became clear they might be rebuked in the Senate Armed Services Committee on holding a vote, so they cut a deal). If we saw 1/20th of the leadership from the Administration on those issues that we did on, say, health care reform, maybe ENDA wouldn't be dead and DADT repeal (such as it is, anyway) been within a hair's breadth of going down at the helm.
There are many reasons the Administration is extremely pro-LGBT in many respects and still gets roundly trashed (rightly or wrongly). But one of the biggest ones I would say is this. Leadership.
One of the biggest selling points of the healthcare reform legislation -- a reason why we are supposed to just accept the massive concessions to the insurance industry and drug companies -- has been the promise that the private insurers would finally be banned from the disgraceful practices of denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
There's a fundamental lesson in collective bargaining that seems to have been lost on the White House, and those in Congress who devised their failing strategy on healthcare reform:
Don't make all your compromises before you walk in the room.
Six worthy items on health care for this evening (most of which were first posted on Open Left in Quick Hits):
The RNC sends out a press release attacking the co-op proposal. No one could have predicted that Republicans would also not agree to the co-op "compromise" proposal, either. Just like no one could predict that Republicans will still attack the health care bill once co-ops are dropped, too.
In an interview today on MSNBC's "Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan," Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R) said he'd vote against any health-care reform bill coming out of the committee unless it has wide support from Republicans -- even if the legislation contains EVERYTHING Grassley wants.
"I am negotiating for Republicans," he said. "If I can't negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I'm not a good negotiator."
Grassley will only vote for the bill if it is supported by a majority of Republicans. Given that the RNC is already attacking co-ops, that should be an easy bar to cross. It truly is a relief that Grassley is negotiating in good faith.
Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY), says that President Obama could lose "100 votes" in the House if the public option is dropped:
WEINER: The President does seem like he's moving away from the public plan, and if he does, he's not going to pass a bill. Because there are just too many people in Washington who believe that the public plan was the only way that you effectively bring some downward pressure on prices, and if he says well we're not going to have that, then I'm not really quite sure what we're dong here.
BECKY QUICK: So you would not vote for a bill that made it through, if it got through...
WEINER: Not only I but I think there's probably a hundred members of the House, who believe for various reasons that you need to have something to bring down prices. Otherwise you're basically, what you're doing, you're keeping the cost arc. . . the CBO agrees with that. You know as it was, I think the public plan had been watered down so much. So if the President thinks he's cutting a deal to get Senate votes, he's probably losing House votes.
It is a good thing that the Democratic leadership will be able to make up the votes by negotiating with Chuck Grassley and through Kent Conrad's co-op idea. Here is the video on Weiner:
Joe Sestak (whose campaign I work for) seems to have found a way to avoid rowdy protesters at town halls: just hold the meetings in places where right-wingers feel uncomfortable about being loud and noisy. Recently, he has held two town halls, one in a predominantly African-American church, and another in a veteran's center. Neither event had significant protests.
So, just find places wingers are scared of--like African American churches--and the protests melt away.
Speaking of town halls, is the national news media just done with that story? There is virtually nothing about the health care protests today on the Elections section of Google News. Last week, there was virtually nothing but the town halls in that section of news. Either national news outlets are bored with the story, or there are more taken with the latest conflict: Dems vs. Dems on health care. Or both.
As Democrats, we should have known all along that fighting with ourselves was a sure way to clear Republican protesters off the headlines. There are few stories the national political news media likes more than Dems vs. Dems.
Here is a great speech by Howard Dean to fire you up on the health care fight:
I spoke just before Howard did, and I remember almost nothing about what I said. Best speech I have heard in a while.
As you know Congress held hearings on Hip Hop yesterday up on Capitol Hill. Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush wanted to see why there is so much music being pushed by corporations that highlight racial stereotypes and disrespect toward women. Overall the hearings were explosive from the start. One of the Congressmen from New York Anthony D Weiner, posed the question as to why artists today don't step it up and do like artists did in the past and pen songs that talk about social issues in the community. He cited Shinehead who at the height of the crack epidemic in the late 80s so fit to write a song that spoke out against crack. He wanted to know why we don't see more artists who have different types of conversations like the way Tribe Called Quest or Brand Nubian did in year's past.
Weiner also noted that Congress won't be able to solve this issue of questionable content, because it's a business decision. He talked about the move Chamillionaire made to not curse on his new album. He suggested that Chamillionaire was making a shrewd business decision to fill a void and capture an audience that doesn't want to hear cursing. He hoped that other artists would see the wisdom in this and follow his lead.
STATE BLOGS
As you know Congress held hearings on Hip Hop yesterday up on Capitol Hill. Chicago Congressman Bobby Rush wanted to see why there is so much music being pushed by corporations that highlight racial stereotypes and disrespect toward women. Overall the hearings were explosive from the start. One of the Congressmen from New York Anthony D Weiner, posed the question as to why artists today don't step it up and do like artists did in the past and pen songs that talk about social issues in the community. He cited Shinehead who at the height of the crack epidemic in the late 80s so fit to write a song that spoke out against crack. He wanted to know why we don't see more artists who have different types of conversations like the way Tribe Called Quest or Brand Nubian did in year's past.