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Obama’s LBJ Moment
Last edited Sun May 13, 2012, 09:46 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/11/obama-s-lbj-moment-with-his-gay-marriage-endorsement.htmlObamas LBJ Moment with His Gay Marriage Endorsement
Robert Dallek
May 11, 2012 1:08 PM EDT
In an election year nearly 50 years ago President Johnson took a risky stand on a civil rights and triumphed. Historian Robert Dallek on the parallels with Obamas gay marriage endorsement.
snip//
Why was the president willing to take on this issue now when it could work against him in what promises to be a tough reelection fight? It could be that Obama campaign officials believe that very few opponents of gay marriage are going to vote for the president anywayso why not boost and solidify his standing with liberals and some sympathetic independents whose enthusiasm for a second term may make a difference in the November out come?
Its also possible that the publication of Robert Caros fourth volume on Lyndon Johnson, which includes a discussion of LBJs courageous stand on the 1964 civil rights bill, triggered President Obamas decision to come out for a gay right that he sees as long overdue. What makes the Johnson analogy so plausible is that, like Johnson, Obama is taking this on in an election year.
snip//
When the bill became law in July 1964, Johnson remained fearful of an upheaval. He foresaw violence, bloodshed, public anarchy, economic dislocation, and defeat for him and the Democrats in the coming election. Of course, nothing of the sort occurred, but he was prescient about the consequences for his party across the old Confederacy. When press secretary Bill Moyers asked him why he wasnt more upbeat about the passage and likely results of the civil rights law, Johnson told him: Because, Bill, I think we just delivered the South to the Republican party for a long time to come. Johnson made few smarter predictions about American politics in the course of his long public career.
Obamas endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnsons legislative success on civil rights. Obamas support is little more than a verbal gesture; he has no capacity to overturn state constitutional amendments or state referenda banning same-sex marriage that passed in thirty-one states all over the country. Only six states and the District of Columbia have enacted measures approving such unions. Nonetheless, it is no small action for a sitting president to have taken a stand in support of a social arrangement that clashes with traditional convictions about what constitutes marriage. Moreover, it could help stimulate court battles and national efforts to add an amendment to the United States Constitution, though the failure during a sixty-year struggle for an Equal Rights Amendment assuring gender equality offers little comfort to those eager to turn the issue into a national referendum.
Whatever the long-term legal prospects for same-sex marriage, President Obamas willingness to put the matter front and center in an election year can at least make him a candidate for inclusion in Kennedys Profiles in Courage.
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Obama’s LBJ Moment (Original Post)
babylonsister
May 2012
OP
annabanana
(52,791 posts)1. k&r . . . .n/t
rug
(82,333 posts)2. This is good but he had another on December 1, 2009.