Don't Promise, Just Do ~ A political opinion
Don’t Promise, Just Do
by Bria L./helplessdancer
Recently, in order to keep myself both entertained and to refrain from becoming incredibly depressed via yet another Battlestar Galactica marathon, I started another rewatch of West Wing since it’s both a show I love and a show that’s fantastic for multitasking.
For those of you who might have lived in a cave for all of your life and don’t know, West Wing was a political drama that aired from September 1999 through May 2006 and followed the lives of high ranking White House staffers for the Democratic President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen). The show was known for consistently being aware of current political events and incorporating them into the show.
I was at the end of season one when the issue of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) came up. Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) was trying to convince a roomful of army officers and congressmen to even consider tossing out the ridiculous policy that’d already been in place for far too many years. Anyone care to wager how well that went?
I didn’t really think much of it at the time until I started getting emails a few days later about President Obama’s promise in his first State of the Union address to repeal DADT. I finally put two and two together and realised something.
If West Wing had done episodes about this existing problem in early 2000… this has been an ongoing problem for at least a decade. That’s half of my life. So I started doing some digging to see exactly how old this issue is. Turns out it’s actually almost as old as me. President Bill Clinton first introduced it as a compromise in 1993. That’s 17 years ago. I know that problems don’t solve themselves overnight but seeing how this policy is but a portion of the issue… doesn’t that seem an awfully long time?
Of course, the next logical step was to actually read that State of the Union that I’d missed while sleeping off a cold halfway around the world. Apparently Obama’s now committed to tackling that policy problem this year. And I ask: Really? Call me jaded but my faith in politicians for the past five years has been a bit faint. I know that all the slow political manoeuvring is part of the game and that one of the downfalls of a democracy is that it takes time to actually do things. Candidates and elected officials make promises to their constituents all the time and often never follow up on them in a particularly timely manner if at all. Actually, in the spirit of that particular predicament, let me address the rest of this article to the man himself.
Mr. President, I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and I think you’re a hell of an improvement over the last guy but you need to do something. This isn’t gay marriage we’re talking about, it’s allowing gays to openly serve in the military. 75 percent of people agreed with rescinding the policy by the way. That’s from a 2008 Washington Post-ABC poll. Even 66 percent of conservatives asked were in favour of it. The overall numbers had risen drastically from the 44 percent who were in favour of allowing gays to openly serve from 1993. Believe it or not, you have the majority of the public’s support on this along with the support of numerous military leaders and the results of scientific studies showing that homosexuals are no less qualified to serve our country than heterosexuals. (For those readers who weren’t previous aware of that science bit, welcome to a more enlightened existence.)
I’m a Plan Girl, Mr. President. I live for making lists and planning out my day or week or life. I’m very much in favour of having a long term plan to deal with a problem. But your problem, sir, is not the DADT policy. That policy is only a part of the larger issue and hurrying along a Congressional vote to repeal the discriminatory policy. Be the John Kennedy and the Lyndon Johnson to the gay community that those two were to the African-Americans. The first step needs to be taken and it needs to be taken now. Health care isn’t going anywhere anytime soon so why not urge Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to start working on that Congressional measure you say is necessary to officially repeal the act or at the very least issue an executive order suspending the discharges? I know this won’t happen over night but why not try and make it happen in the next month or two? You gave yourself the year to keep this particular campaign promise. The economy isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon so why not quickly and efficiently tackle a problem that you can. Show the American people that Congress actually can be an effective branch of government. Just think: another 12,000 highly qualified soldiers won’t be discharged and you’ll have the LGBT community’s support for the next election.
Just think about it, Mr. President. I’ll be over here in Italy watching West Wing, waiting and hoping you can do what this fictional president couldn’t.
Further Reading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802561.html
http://dont.stanford.edu/doclist.html
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/miltest2.html
by Bria L./helplessdancer
Recently, in order to keep myself both entertained and to refrain from becoming incredibly depressed via yet another Battlestar Galactica marathon, I started another rewatch of West Wing since it’s both a show I love and a show that’s fantastic for multitasking.
For those of you who might have lived in a cave for all of your life and don’t know, West Wing was a political drama that aired from September 1999 through May 2006 and followed the lives of high ranking White House staffers for the Democratic President Jed Bartlet (Martin Sheen). The show was known for consistently being aware of current political events and incorporating them into the show.
I was at the end of season one when the issue of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) came up. Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) was trying to convince a roomful of army officers and congressmen to even consider tossing out the ridiculous policy that’d already been in place for far too many years. Anyone care to wager how well that went?
I didn’t really think much of it at the time until I started getting emails a few days later about President Obama’s promise in his first State of the Union address to repeal DADT. I finally put two and two together and realised something.
If West Wing had done episodes about this existing problem in early 2000… this has been an ongoing problem for at least a decade. That’s half of my life. So I started doing some digging to see exactly how old this issue is. Turns out it’s actually almost as old as me. President Bill Clinton first introduced it as a compromise in 1993. That’s 17 years ago. I know that problems don’t solve themselves overnight but seeing how this policy is but a portion of the issue… doesn’t that seem an awfully long time?
Of course, the next logical step was to actually read that State of the Union that I’d missed while sleeping off a cold halfway around the world. Apparently Obama’s now committed to tackling that policy problem this year. And I ask: Really? Call me jaded but my faith in politicians for the past five years has been a bit faint. I know that all the slow political manoeuvring is part of the game and that one of the downfalls of a democracy is that it takes time to actually do things. Candidates and elected officials make promises to their constituents all the time and often never follow up on them in a particularly timely manner if at all. Actually, in the spirit of that particular predicament, let me address the rest of this article to the man himself.
Mr. President, I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and I think you’re a hell of an improvement over the last guy but you need to do something. This isn’t gay marriage we’re talking about, it’s allowing gays to openly serve in the military. 75 percent of people agreed with rescinding the policy by the way. That’s from a 2008 Washington Post-ABC poll. Even 66 percent of conservatives asked were in favour of it. The overall numbers had risen drastically from the 44 percent who were in favour of allowing gays to openly serve from 1993. Believe it or not, you have the majority of the public’s support on this along with the support of numerous military leaders and the results of scientific studies showing that homosexuals are no less qualified to serve our country than heterosexuals. (For those readers who weren’t previous aware of that science bit, welcome to a more enlightened existence.)
I’m a Plan Girl, Mr. President. I live for making lists and planning out my day or week or life. I’m very much in favour of having a long term plan to deal with a problem. But your problem, sir, is not the DADT policy. That policy is only a part of the larger issue and hurrying along a Congressional vote to repeal the discriminatory policy. Be the John Kennedy and the Lyndon Johnson to the gay community that those two were to the African-Americans. The first step needs to be taken and it needs to be taken now. Health care isn’t going anywhere anytime soon so why not urge Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to start working on that Congressional measure you say is necessary to officially repeal the act or at the very least issue an executive order suspending the discharges? I know this won’t happen over night but why not try and make it happen in the next month or two? You gave yourself the year to keep this particular campaign promise. The economy isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon so why not quickly and efficiently tackle a problem that you can. Show the American people that Congress actually can be an effective branch of government. Just think: another 12,000 highly qualified soldiers won’t be discharged and you’ll have the LGBT community’s support for the next election.
Just think about it, Mr. President. I’ll be over here in Italy watching West Wing, waiting and hoping you can do what this fictional president couldn’t.
Further Reading:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/18/AR2008071802561.html
http://dont.stanford.edu/doclist.html
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/miltest2.html