Author Archives: Tin Man

One Day Later

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I woke up this morning and it hit me all over again: Barack Obama is the President-elect of the United States.

I can’t get over how wonderful it feels.

I keep having to remind myself that it’s not just the end of a campaign, but a new beginning of something else. We’ve just concluded a two-year epic saga, in which one of the main characters was Barack Obama. But it’s not like getting to the last page of a book, where you put it down and never think about it again. No — we’re at just the beginning! This has all been just prelude! It’s like we’ve just finished The Hobbit and we’re about to start reading The Lord of the Rings.

When I’ve hoped and thought about Barack Obama being president recently, it’s not just the Big Idea of it, but the little images that have come into my mind:

  • President Obama giving the State of the Union every year, with Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi standing behind him.
  • President Obama walking across the White House Lawn to Marine One, then turning around to give a salute before ascending the steps of the helicopter.
  • President Obama and the leader of another country sitting together in fancy chairs in the Oval Office, while photographers click away.
  • TV reporters referring to him as “the President,” without even having to use his real name. “The President announced today…” or, “Norah O’Donnell, NBC News, with the President.”

Really, I feel like we’re at the beginning of a remake of The West Wing.

And I love this article about the new First Family.

Obama will make mistakes. He has difficult decisions ahead. Our country’s in the toilet. And day-to-day governance is messy, with its daily news cycles, the messy legislative process, wins and losses, Washington sniping, political roundtables on TV. Poetry gives way to prose. In the euphoria of his election and inauguration, Bill Clinton talked about changing the culture of Washington. So did George W. Bush. It never happened.

There will be times I disagree with President Obama, get annoyed at him, disappointed in him. There will be times when the public does as well.

But this is an extraordinary man. And if things are even a smidgen better than they’ve been for the last eight years, we’re in luck.

On Tuesday night, as Obama was speaking in Chicago, I turned to Matt and said, “We’ll finally have a president again who knows how to speak.”

That alone is reason to rejoice.

On Prop 8

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I haven’t written about Prop 8 yet.

Nothing can dim my utter euphoria at the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, which will have much greater consequences for our country and the world than the passage of Prop 8. But Prop 8’s passage is very disappointing nonetheless.

Still, all is not lost. California’s gay couples will still have the option of domestic partnerships that approximate marriage in all but name. This is not ideal, but ain’t beanbag. Same-sex couples can get married in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and probably next year in New Jersey. New York recognizes same-sex marriage, as long as the marriage is performed elsewhere.

Also, it’s ridiculously easy to change the California constitution. As attitudes on marriage equality continue to progress, same-sex marriage in California is more likely to become permanently legal. We’ll just have to continue to fight, that’s all.

Gay rights groups have filed lawsuits against Prop 8. I don’t think this is a good idea. Not only is it awful public relations, but it will probably lose.

The reason civil unions and domestic partnerships are not good enough, and will never be good enough, is because of the intangible advantage marriage brings: social respect. There are tangible advantages to marriage as well, such as: while everyone knows what marriage is, civil unions and domestic partnerships are harder to explain to the hospital administrator when you need to visit your partner there. But in a large part, this is about the respect that equality brings.

The defeat of Prop 8 shows that we don’t have enough respect yet. (And the irony that black Californians voted 70-30 in favor of Prop 8 is painful.) Which comes first: respect, or the right to marriage? Or does one reinforce the other?

Time is on our side. It will take longer to achieve success than we thought.

But time is on our side.

Finally, Dale Carpenter has written the best thing I’ve seen so far about all this.

Four Years Ago

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Four years ago in the New York Times:

The Democratic Party emerged from this week’s election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance.

Democrats said President Bush’s defeat of Senator John Kerry by three million votes had left the party facing its most difficult time in at least 20 years. Some Democrats said the situation was particularly worrisome because of the absence of any compelling Democratic leader prepared to steer the party back to power or carry its banner in 2008. …

At this very early date, party officials said Hillary Rodham Clinton, the New York senator, is best positioned to win the presidential nomination. But Democrats and some Republicans said Mrs. Clinton was open to caricature by Republicans as the type of candidate that this election suggested was so damaging to the Democratic Party: a Northeastern, secular liberal.

In addition to Mrs. Clinton, two Democrats from this year — Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who was Mr. Kerry’s running mate, and Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor — are likely to move to wield influence, and perhaps run for president themselves.

Both men are burdened by their own losses this year. And in one disadvantage for Mr. Edwards, several party officials said there would likely be renewed hesitancy to run a member of Congress for the presidency, given the success the White House had undercutting Mr. Kerry’s credibility with votes he had cast.

This also appeared in the Times — a few days earlier.

It’s amazing what can happen in just four years.