The Ocean Is Coming

[Jim Lane]

262. The President and Congress

It's interesting to me that, in praising (or at least exonerating) Clinton to make Obama look worse by comparison, you make one of the assumptions that I've always criticized when it comes from the Obama-can-do-no-wrong crowd: that Congressional votes are immutable and the President has no influence over them.

If Obama, having said that he would insist on a "robust" public option in ACA, had sent Congress a bill that included one, and had pushed for it (TV address, appeals to party loyalty, etc.), would he have attracted enough votes to get it enacted? If Clinton had denounced Glass-Steagall repeal and similarly pressed his position, would he have swung enough votes to sustain a veto? In each case, we can't know for sure, but we can fault the President for not trying.

On DADT, you may have a point, but not as to DOMA. Ted Kennedy said at the time:

What is left of this bill is its real goal — it is a mean-spirited form of legislative gay-bashing designed to inflame the public four months before the November election. (quoted in this article)

It was certainly not "state of the art" for LGBT rights.