2016 Postmortem

portlander23

(2,078 posts) Fri Oct 30, 2015, 11:10 AM Oct 2015

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Defense of Marriage Act, explained

Last edited Sun Nov 1, 2015, 11:46 AM - Edit history (1)

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Defense of Marriage Act, explained
Matthew Yglesias
Vox

At the same time, despite DOMA the Clinton administration was, at the time, the most pro–LGBT equality presidency in American history. And Clinton's refusal to even hold a signing ceremony for DOMA is an indication that even in 1996 he recognized that he was putting himself on the wrong side of history. This has encouraged both Clintons to recount a version of the DOMA debate in which they were actually helping the cause of equality by forestalling the passage of a Federal Marriage Amendment, which, had it been put in place, would have prevented all the legal and political work that eventually brought marriage equality to all 50 states.

It's a politically convenient story, and it has the virtue of fitting the broad macro facts about how American law and politics developed in the 20-year time span between 1995 and 2015. Unfortunately for the Clintons, a detailed examination of the documentary evidence from the Clinton White House by BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner makes it pretty clear that it's not true. If DOMA ultimately served the role that the Clintons are now attributing to it, it did so largely by coincidence, not as a result of strategy.

As Richard Socarides, then the White House adviser on LGBT issues, recounts, Clinton complained about the bill at the time. His press secretary described the marriage panic as "gay baiting, pure and simple," and Clinton himself snorted that the issue was "hardly a problem that is sweeping the country."

Yet faced with the popularity of DOMA and its overwhelming support in Congress, Clinton signed the law and ran radio ads touting his support of it in Southern states. He signed it in the middle of the night, with no cameras present and without a signing ceremony, as if he knew at the time that he would not want it to be part of his legacy, though he did want it to be part of his reelection campaign.

On another level, LGBTQ leaders — especially ones who were in leadership positions in the 1990s — are frustrated that Bill Clinton hasn't actually apologized, even though he now says DOMA was unconstitutional. They feel he did the wrong thing at the time and sold them out, and has never owned up to it.

But on a bigger level, DOMA is a reminder of the politics of "triangulation" that characterized much of the Clinton years. While Hillary Clinton has heavily invested in an image of herself as a gritty "fighter" for progressive causes, the realities of the mid-1990s were rather different. While Obama-era Republicans have generally pursued a politics of hostage taking and high-stakes confrontation, Clinton-era congressional Republicans were often much more willing to cut deals. The Clinton administration was also very willing to cut deals, signing things like DOMA, the 1996 welfare reform bill, and a 1997 budget agreement that cut capital gains taxes. This spirit of dealmaking largely evaporated when Republicans decided to impeach Clinton. For example, it's widely believed that the impeachment crisis scuttled a nascent Clinton-Gingrich agreement to partially privatize Social Security.