NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/soc/motss/58944

Text File | 1993-01-28 | 6.3 KB | 148 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!pacbell.com!rjwill6
From: [e-mail] (Rod Williams)
Subject: Clinton's Bad Timing
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Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, California
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 22:19:58 GMT
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Today's (1/28/93) New York Times has an interesting analysis
of how the G/L Military Ban issue has unfolded, and the
political cost of Clinton's mishandling of it...

    ---------------------------------------------------

White House Memo:

TIMING AWRY, CLINTON TRIPS INTO A BRAWL
By Richard L. Berke
Special to The New York Times

Washington, Jan. 27 -- Acknowledging that they underestimated
the opposition in Congress and the Pentagon to homosexuals in
the military, White House aides say the struggle has left
President Clinton in an awkward test of wills on an issue that
neither he nor gay rights organizations had made a strong
priority.

As a result, at a moment when he is more interested in dealing
with his economic agenda, Mr. Clinton has little choice but to
expend precious political capital with Congress in pushing
ahead on his campaign promise to end the military's ban on
homosexuals.

Although the White House scrambled today to seek compromise
with lawmakers, aides to Mr. Clinton made clear that he would
not back down from his goal of reversing the ban and thus
avoid being attacked either for breaking another campaign
pledge or for abandoning his gay constituency.

But the course of events left some of Mr. Clinton's strongest
supporters conceding that he miscalculated the political
repercussions of his pledge from the start.  Many argued that
the President could have had an easier time if he had dealt
with the ban last week, when he issued orders on abortion and
other matters.

"If he had done it last week, it would have been one of five
things," said Representative Patricia Schroeder, a Colorado
Democrat who sought to build Congressional support for Mr.
Clinton's position.  "There would have been some screaming
about it, but not this media feeding frenzy."

She also said White House aides should have more convincingly
argued to Congress that this was not only a civil rights issue
but one of national security.  "They didn't emphasize that it
doesn't make sense for people who are handling the top secrets
of the nation to be exposed to blackmail," she said.


Although the extent of public opposition to homosexuals in the
military is impossible to judge accurately, there has been a
far louder outcry in the past several days on the issue than
there was during the campaign.

Mr. Clinton's move should have come as no surprise either to
the military or to Congress: ending the ban was firmly and
consistently listed as a campaign pledge, even if he raised
the issue only sporadically on the trail.

While gay organizations have long demanded that homosexuals
be admitted into the military, their political efforts during
the campaign were concentrated on raising money to fight the
AIDS epidemic and on broader efforts to protect homosexuals
against discrimination in housing and the workplace.

"I think it's something that we almost backed into," Mr.
Clinton said when asked in an interview in August about his
positions on matters important to gay Americans.  While he
said his proposal on homosexuals in the military would
"frighten some Americans," he predicted that "if the American
people will hear me out I have what I consider to be a basic,
common-sense view of this."

What Mr. Clinton clearly did not anticipate then was that
some people would try to expand his comments into a referendum
on whether homosexuality is acceptable in America.

Nor did he appear to anticipate the eagerness with which
Republican lawmakers seized on the issue to give him a
political fight early in his Administration.

Even more important, Mr. Clinton's advisers said, the
President did not anticipate the depth of outrage among
Democrats in Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over an
issue that to them was in many ways symbolic and, on its face,
less complicated than practical matters like improving the
economy.  But the matter became so contentious that at a time
of international crises, it dominated Mr. Clinton's first
meeting with the Joint Chiefs.

In particular, said David Mixner, an adviser to Mr. Clinton on
gay issues during the campaign, the new Administration never
expected that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Colin L.
Powell, would oppose [lifting] the ban with such intensity,
though his position has long been known.

"His failure to exert moral leadership has allowed this issue
to grow into what it has grown into," Mr. Mixner said of
General Powell.  In the long term, he said, "I don't think
it's going to hurt Clinton politically; people will respect
that he kept to his word, stuck to his guns, standing up for
unpopular issues.  Isn't that a little bit of what Ross Perot
was all about?"

But many gay rights advocates complained that Mr. Clinton was
naive in believing he could change people's minds on such a
controversial issue, and they contended that he could have
limited the debate by moving more quickly and forcefully.

"This is an organized effort by the religious right to slap
Clinton around in the first 10 days," said William W. Waybourn,
executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, a
political action committee.  "They've been beating us to death
for the last 72 hours.  It's killing us."

Marvin Liebman, a conservative who is a gay rights advocate,
said Mr. Clinton should have signed an executive order last
week.  "Clinton caused it to become an explosive political
issue by inaction," he said.  "The more you let these
characters talk -- the military men like to flex their muscles
-- the more trouble you're going to get with it.  He's being
pushed around by the military."

Mr. Mixner disagreed.  "No politician," he said, "has used up
more political capital on behalf of our community in the
history of the country."

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rod williams -=- pacific bell -=- san ramon, ca -=- [e-mail]
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