THE LOW POST: Driving Miss Clinton

But this question, the homosexuality question, this is different. We all know that we live in an era where politicians navigate whole careers in a sort of moral fog, with their eyes closed, using polls as instruments. We know that in most cases, when a politician expresses an opinion on a controversial topic, he's most likely parroting our own views back to us, views that he discerned using paid cultural snoops like Zogby. Thus ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a politician's words are indistinguishable, from a marketing standpoint, from candy-bar wrappers. They test colors and fonts with focus groups, pick the one that gets the best numbers, and put it out there to see if it can beat Snickers.

We know that's the deal. But that crap doesn't fly with this gay-rights issue. In this case there is no future performance in office one is safeguarding with a careful, poll-tested answer. In this case the very act of answering the question is policy. When you're trying to combat bigotry and ignorance, you need to demonstrate actual human leadership, not computerized hedging. By punting the issue of the morality of homosexuality, Hillary dignifies the question. And let's all be clear about what's going on here. It was the word "morality" that had Hillary spooked. If you read the Democratic Leadership Council's press releases (and Hillary is the horse they're backing most forcefully in this race -- Hill's face is on the banner of their site), you know that they understand "moral values" to be the field upon which the 2008 electoral battle will be won or lost. The DLC hacks speak in code in this area, but you can catch their meaning easily enough. Here's a review in Blueprint (the DLC mag) by Jason Newman of a book about "family values":

This is not to say that Democrats can ignore such issues as abortion or gay marriage, topics that reasonable people of all faiths disagree on. There is common ground that can be found, as Miller notes, such as on the need to reduce unwanted pregnancies. But Miller argues that Democrats must understand that America is one of the most religious countries in the world and confront those issues head on -- by showing respect and understanding for those who disagree on the hot-button social issues...

In the DLC mindset, "confronting" issues head on basically means surrendering. When they say that we need to "understand" that America is a very religious country and "show respect" for people who disagree, what they really mean is we need to waffle as much as is humanly possible in the hopes that the Okies won't guess what we really believe. In Hillary's case, that means trying to reassure gays in one sentence by telling them that homosexuality is "who you are," and stroking swing-vote Christians in the next by saying that you'll "leave it to others" to conclude the issue of the morality of homosexuality.

That's called seeing the fork in the road and taking it, folks, and on other issues it wouldn't be such a bad thing. But in this case it's an outrageously cynical failure of leadership. She'd have done better keeping her mouth shut and just issuing the following press release:

On the issue of gays in the military, Senator Clinton is sincere in her belief that voters on both sides of the matter are fucking morons and will vote for her no matter what she says?

Because that's basically what she did, in a nutshell. Hillary thinks we're all stupid and that if we're robo-stroked often enough by her poll-generated paeans, we'll pull the lever for her. Amazingly enough, in modern American politics, that's how you win on the "morality" issue.