NYT: 'On Gay Rights, Obama Lets Surrogates Lead'

[MADem]

44. Clinton held his nose while doing it, though, I think.

It's tough to have to deal with idiots. The sad fact is that we've got--even today, still--way too many damn morons running around voting in this country. There's a fine line between caving to them, and doing the "He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day" routine.

I worked VERY hard on the DOD implementation of the repeal on the ban when Clinton was elected. We were within a month of having our shit completely together (and it's not just a "Wave the magic wand, the rule is changed" thing--there's a TON of regulations and paperwork that need to be changed to support the repeal, and I crawled through acres of paper identifying the changes and getting them ready for promulgation--seven days a week, fourteen hour days, exhausting, boring, mind-numbing labor) and no one was more pissed than I was when the whole thing got the kabash so close to the finish line. I got the sense from the people on Clinton's staff that NO ONE was happy about it, that they were quietly enraged, noses were out of joint, but they weren't able to overcome the situation politically. I boxed all that shit up and put it in the archives so it wouldn't get tossed out after two years (which is what happens). I have no idea if anyone has kept it, still, all these years, but even though the regs have been rewritten six ways to Sunday since then, there's still a lot of "lists" and basic language modifications that could still be used if they kept all that work. Of course, the question now is--does ANYONE have a computer that'll take a three and a half inch floppy anymore?

I can't defend or excoriate Clinton, because I just don't know what was in his heart. I do know that I got a lot of "This totally sucks" vibe from his people when they told us to shut it all down, though.