[img]139|left|Jessica Gadsden||no_popup[/img] Bill Clinton broke my husband’s heart.
A year before I met him, my husband was still a registered Democrat, and voted for the man from a place called Hope.
Bill Clinton brought a message of change, an end to the 12 years of Republican governance.
He promised a new kind of government, and spoke of lofty ideas like high-speed rail, universal healthcare and laying fiber-optic cables across the country. So my dear husband, with his eyes open and his heart hopeful, cast his vote.
Perhaps because I grew up black and poor, I had a much more cynical view of the 1992 Presidential election – the first in which I would ever vote. I cast my vote, hoping the once vibrant third party candidacy of Ross Perot would thrust our country into a much-needed Constitutional crisis, and our country would once and for all throw off the vestige of slavery that is the Electoral College. It was not to be, and I was stuck with the Clinton plurality presidency.
My memory is not too short to forget what progressives like my husband got for their votes – a man stubbornly wedded to compromise on issues like gay rights, public assistance for the poor and the (Newt) Gingrich Republican revolution of 1994. By 1996, not much had gotten done, and this was long before Monica Lewinski, her blue dress, and the impeachment hearings.
What Progress After Two Terms?
And so, in 2000, after eight years of a Democratic presidency, alas, we had not come much farther than before. Indeed, the outspoken conservative Richard Posner celebrated the triumph of conservatism. The so-called “progressive” leadership of the Democratic party had turned to milquetoast.
During the 1996 elections, as this change (not the kind my husband had in mind) was under way, we debated, loudly, on the issue of compromise. Despite disappointments, he still clung to the belief that one should vote for the candidate who best represented one’s views and was most likely to win.
I believed, and still believe to this day, that one should vote for the candidate (if one exists) who represents all of your values, no matter what. So my husband held his nose and voted for Clinton again, and again I did not. Although his candidate won, my spouse was left bitter about the continued pattern of broken promises and disappointments. I could sleep, my conscience clear, even though my views were not represented in the White House.
After the disaster that was the Clinton presidency, I won my husband over to the dark side. He realized there was nothing gained by starting with compromise or by being a registered Democrat.
Obama’s Wrong Position
Fast forward 12 years later to the 2008 elections. I did not vote for Barack Obama in the Presidential primary election. I felt that his stance on gay marriage was all wrong. But many of my friends voted for him despite this fundamental disagreement. Their theory? That really, secretly, he was for gay marriage, but had to lie and fudge for the rubes in middle America. Oh, and yes, my friends told me, he’s really an atheist as well, but joined a church to pacify the evangelicals in the South. They also theorized that he really supported policies that benefitted African Americans – after all, isn’t he one himself? – but he couldn’t talk about it because whites wouldn’t vote for him. Early compromise morphed into myth.
But then in November 2008, I did something I said I’d never do. I compromised. I held my nose and voted for Barack Obama. Even I had started to believe that he really represented us (whoever that may be), and our values, but he just couldn’t say so. Plus, I rationalized, the alternative of McCain/Palin was just plum crazy. (And it would have been.)
I am now reaping the reward of making that compromise. It’s not pretty.
Hope Springs, Then Falls
On a number of issues, I had great hope for change. First, I hoped for progressive Cabinet picks. It didn’t happen – except for Eric Holder maybe, and that was a surprise. Instead, Obama’s cabinet looks like every other Presidential cabinet, those who were rewarded for being longtime supporters, institutional choices propping up the agenda of corporate America, and a sprinkling of minorities, albeit from elite schools, for flavor. Plus, he has surrounded himself with Clinton people. Not just Hillary. There are lots of them, from Rahm Emmanuel (a senior advisor to Clinton, now Obama’s Chief of Staff) to Leon Panetta (Chief of Staff to Clinton, now Obama’s Director of the CIA) to Larry Summers (Treasury Secretary to Clinton, now Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council), just to name a few.
Then there’s that whole war thing. I never believed either war was justified, but even I realize you can’t unring a bell. Obama has delayed his pullout of troops from Iraq, and in the end, his timetable doesn’t look much different from that of the previous administration. He’s going to close Guantanamo. But will he allow detainees to challenge their detention? Sort of, kind of, maybe is the latest answer. Yes, the media can now film soldiers’ coffins returning from the Middle East. But he recently reversed himself on the release of torture photographs. He’s also not going to prosecute the rank and file CIA members who perpetrated the torture because . . . (wait for it) . . . they were just following orders. Has he learned nothing from post- World War II and the excuse – soundly rejected at Nuremberg – of the “good Germans?” Instead of just doing the right thing, he’s providing fodder for Dick Cheney who’s been on a speaking tour defending his presidency.
Why Sign up?
Then there is the issue of gays in the military. Now I can’t imagine why anyone, gay or straight, would want to serve, particularly given the lack of a plan or even goal in Afghanistan, but if you want, you should be able to serve. Obama asked for the military to assess what impact the service of openly gay soldiers would have on national security and military discipline. Sure, ask the discriminatory body to do a self-assessment. Maybe Lincoln – whom Obama so much admires – should have asked slaveholders whether emancipation was a good idea. No. Leadership is making a choice and sticking with it.
The financial crisis has provided a unique opportunity to put right so much of what has gone wrong with our financial system. It’s the perfect time to impose strict regulation, nationalize the banking system, and actually fix things. Instead we get Wall Street insiders lending themselves vast sums of taxpayer money, and a failure to address the core issues in a bid to assure a swift, and probably questionable, economic turnaround.
Barack Obama was going to be the first President to address the needs of sub-Saharan Africa. But according to White House officials, he can’t really make a committed visit to Africa until sometime during the third or fourth year of his Presidency. How to appease the people? A one-night stop and photo-op in Ghana, while making his way back from his third trip to Europe.
In our house, we’re starting to call it the Jay Leno Presidency.
After all, why else would Obama lead with his chin on student loans and healthcare? According to the White House blog, tuition has increased between 154 and 186 percent in the last 30 years, while family income has increased only10 percent. Since1999, healthcare premiums have increased 120 percent. But Obama has started addressing these issues with compromises. He’s proposed no tuition cost controls. Instead he’s proposed that the government be the sole provider of federal loans. Free guaranteed money – we can only sit and watch tuition costs spiral further out of control. He’s also dismissed the single-payer health care system. Instead, he’s having meetings urging various industries to voluntarily control costs. And the current proposal includes a government-paid stop-gap system for America’s uninsured.
You can imagine I’m not thrilled with the idea of a tax increase to pay for health insurance while still being stuck with over a thousand dollars of monthly premiums that are sure to rise. Is this change I can believe in? I don’t think so.
For a number of people Barack Obama is the embodiment of everything we all want from a President. But the myth has not become the man.
I know, I know. It could all turn around. My handwringing and bellyaching could be for naught. But every time I watch Barack Obama speak, I get that that uncomfortable feeling, a little like heartburn, that I’m in for the Clinton Presidency redux.
Bill Clinton broke my husband’s heart. I hope Barack Obama doesn’t break mine.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. She's a reformed lawyer, and full time novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course.This will mark the debut of our newest, and perhaps most charismatic, weekly essayist. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com.
