On Friday, Alex Pareene at Salon wondered why the Obama Administration, ostensibly committed to repealing the military’s archaic policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, is appealing a federal court ruling that would abolish the hated and unpopular policy. All the Obama Administration has to do is the same thing Schwarzenegger’s doing in California when it comes to the Proposition 8 case: refuse to defend it. Instead, they’re appealing and allowing DADT to continue.
Quoting Marc Ambinder, he offered three possible rationales:
One group thinks Obama has to get the Pentagon on board before DADT can be repealed and the Pentagon will get all cranky if the courts make them stop kicking out the gays before they are good and ready to join the rest of the modern world. Another group thinks Obama should appeal but also order the Defense Department to stop all DADT-related activity. This group apparently thinks a plan of action that pleases no one at all is the best plan of all.
And then there are the people who are right:
And then there’s a group of advisors who appear to be as fed up with the maneuvering as Rachel Maddow is, and who want the president to make a public statement effectively saying, “Enough is enough. We’ve done this as orderly as we can. We can’t control everything. But the policy is dead, as of today.” Even under this scenario, gay soldiers wouldn’t have access to spousal benefits just yet — the DoD does need time to figure out how it would all work.
Obama apparently sided with the second group of advisors.
If I may, I’d like to offer a fourth possibility, one that seems far more germane to the current moment. Two weeks from now is a massively important election, one in which every single Democratic hold, in both the House and the Senate, could have enormous implications for the remainder of Obama’s term. But wait, isn’t DADT massively unpopular? Wouldn’t getting rid of it be a boon electorally?
Nationally DADT is massively unpopular, but the Administration isn’t running a national campaign, they’re trying desperately to save Democrats in districts and states that are far Redder than the national average. The absolute last thing those endangered Blue incumbents want to talk about right now is letting fags into the army. There’s a black President, a female Speaker, and the economy sucks; handing those dirty, sinful homosexuals a high publicity victory right now might be the only way to wind up the Tea Party wackos even more than they already are.
Granted, I have no evidence whatsoever for this theory. It’s a naked politicization of the Justice Department (albeit on a much smaller scale than Bush the Younger) and it probably won’t matter in the least. But it makes a hell of a lot more sense than any of those other theories. In its first two years, this Administration has done nothing more consistently than mollycoddle the right wing of the Democratic Party. There’s a debate over whether or not that’s wise course of action, but it certainly fits the pattern.
