Joy-Ann Reid's Open Salon Blog

Truman, Obama, and the mythic 'executive order'

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:10:30 -0400

Harry Truman in uniform in 1916, as an officer during World I.

Gay rights activists have given mixed reviews to President Obama's "big gay speech" the other night, with many, including radio host Michelangelo Signorili, saying they're tired of words. They want action from this president -- and they want it NOW -- on repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell," on killing off the Defense of Marriage Act (good luck getting that through this Senate...) and on an Employment Non Discrimination Act (much more likely to get done in my opinion...)

Much of the heat on Obama is centered on the military policy, which many activists claim he can abolish (or at least arrest) with the "stroke of a pen," either by issuing a giant stop-loss order (which would have the unpleasant effect of preventing ALL troops from returning home to their families...) or by issuing an executive order demanding the military stop enforcing the law requiring the separation of gay and lesbian soldiers who admit as much, from service. It all sounds very simple, and activists claim that if Harry Truman could desegregate the military during the far more racist climate of the 1940s, Obama can do it now, since polls show a majority of Americans, both outside the military and inside, approve of open service. Plus, the Europeans are already doing it (the weakest argument of all, since Europeans also don't commit their troops to tough combat by and large, with the exception of the Brits, and never in the numbers we do, and so Americans perceive them as "non-fighting forces" and don't care what they do regarding their gay and lesbian troops.)

Well, I hate to be the skunk at the garden party, but it's not quite that simple, and neither is the history.

For one thing, DADT is the law of the land, overturnable not by the president, but rather by Congress. Everyone seems to get that at this point, including Barney Frank, who threw cold water on this weekend's march on Washington by saying "the only thing it's going to pressure is the grass" (members of Congress are home for the Columbus Day weekend.)

For another, while Harry Truman did indeed sign an executive order calling for the desegregation of the military ["Executive Order 9981, establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. It was accompanied by Executive Order 9980, which created a Fair Employment Board to eliminate racial discrimination in federal employment". Source: Redstone Arsenal], it was 6 years from the time he signed that order in 1948, until the day the last segregated regiment was disbanded in the U.S. in 1954. And it wasn't until the 1960s that the desegregation of the reluctant military was considered accomplished. Also from the Redstone Arsenal:

The true fulfillment of the entire scope of Executive Order 9981—equality of treatment and opportunity—actually required an additional change in Defense Department policy. This occurred with the publication of Department of Defense Directive 5120.36 on 26 July 1963, 15 years to the day after Truman signed the original order. This major about-face in policy issued by Secretary of Defense Robert J. McNamara expanded the military’s responsibility to include the elimination of off-base discrimination detrimental to the military effectiveness of black servicemen.

In other words, the desegregation of the U.S. military did not take place "with the stroke of a pen," nor did it originate with President Truman, who signed his executive order in the summer of the last year of his first term, having succeeded FDR, who had died 82 days into his fourth term. Notably, Roosevelt, considered a Democratic hero, did not, in four terms, attempt to desegregate the military.

Truman signed the order in the midst of a re-election fight that he was widely expected to lose. So fractured was Truman's coalition that southern Democrats had abandoned the Democratic Party, running their own candidate for president that year on the segregationist "Dixiecrat" line -- a guy named Strom Thurmond. The cause of the rift? Truman ordered a presidential level report in 1947 reviewing civil rights across the board in America, called "To Secure These Rights," which aimed at reforms in voting and employment, among other things. As for desegregating the military, that process had began in 1945, when not the president, but rather the secretary of war, undertook a review of racial policy in the United States Army, Navy and Marines:

1 October 1945 Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson ordered the U.S. Army to review its racial policies. Consequently, General George C. Marshall established a board headed by Lieutenant General Alvan C. Gillem, Jr., to study the situation and prepare a directive on the use of African Americans in the postwar Army.

17 November 1945 The Gillem Board finished its study of the Army’s racial policies and sent its report to the Chief of Staff. Although it came close to recommending that the Army integrate its forces, the Gillem Board members ultimately decided not to do so because integration "would have been a radical step, out of keeping with the climate of opinion in the country and in the Army itself." Instead the board provided 18 specific recommendations based on the principles that African Americans had "a constitutional right to fight" and the Army had "to make the most effective use of every soldier." Although the Gillem Board advised Army leaders to provide more opportunities for qualified blacks based on individual merit, it sidestepped the fundamental problem of segregation and only committed the Army to limited reforms.

1945-46 During the immediate postwar period, the U.S. Armed Forces began developing new racial policies. The need to make the most effective use of all available manpower, demands by civil rights groups, and higher black reenlistment rates were major factors affecting the new policies.

1945-50 The Marine Corps’ postwar attempt to adhere to a policy of rigid racial segregation remained in effect until the Korean War. It ultimately established a numerical quota of 1500 blacks, most of whom the Corps tried to assign to the nonwhite Steward’s Branch. Few recruits signed up for such duty, while those men already in that branch constantly sought transfers to general duty. Not only did this continual pressure cause problems for the USMC, but the unwillingness of most U.S. communities to accept "a large segregated group of black marines…was infinitely more difficult."

In short, the military after World War II was facing a problem of blacks who fought in the war wanting to re-enlist, but in most cases, the military didn't want them, except as Navy stewards or other menial tasks. The tension between the soldiers' demands, and increasing agitation from civil rights leaders like A. Philip Randolph, plus the basic manpower needs of the military, forced the military itself -- not the president -- to look at the policy. Truman didn't even become directly involved in the issue until September of 1946, when several instances of racially-motivated violence against black veterans caused his government to take an aggressive stance on civil rights across the board, with the military included in the mix. Which brings us to 1947:

May 1947 The Secretary of War adopted a National Guard Policy Committee resolution allowing individual states to determine the issue of "integration above the company level," although the Army continued to prohibit "integration at the company level." That same year, New Jersey became the first state to specifically end segregation in its militia. This action created new problems for Army leaders, who now had to deal with "an incompatible situation between the segregated active forces and the incompletely integrated reserve organization."

30 June 1947 By this time, African-American soldiers represented 7.91 percent of the Army’s total manpower. Instead of being based on their demographic presence in the U.S. population, however, black enlistments were "geared to a percentage of the total Army strength." By adjusting the enlistment quota, the Army could easily increase or decrease the percentage of blacks within its ranks.

25 July 1947 Congress passed the National Security Act, reorganizing the U.S. military establishment. The new legislation created the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), a separate Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Council. It also reorganized the War Department as the Department of the Army and made the Joint Chiefs of Staff a permanent agency.

October 1947 To avoid the political backlash if he failed to act on discrimination in the federal government, President Truman’s political advisors decided that his best move was to issue an executive order "securing the civil rights of both civilian government employees and members of the armed forces."

Truman would issue that executive order in July of 1948, just months before the election, months after A. Philip Randoph had to go to the White House to complain that integration of blacks into the armed forces was simply not taking place, and just days after the Dixiecrats bolted from the Democratic Party following the July convention, because of Truman's strong civil rights platform. And yet, despite the order, it would be 15 years before the integration of the military really took place.

That's not to say that gay rights activists shouldn't advocate for their cause, particularly by pressing Congress, but if they're going to use history as a cudgel over this president's head, they should at least get the history right.

Saying President Obama could institute open service with the stroke of a pen is both historicaly inaccurate, and politically naive. It ignores the key facts about Truman's action:

1. Integration of the military was initiated by the military itself, not by the president;

2. Truman's order did not immediately desegregate the military; and

3. Truman did not desegregate the military at the beginning of his term, when he was at his most popular, having succeeded a popular Democratic president and won the war (by nuking Japan.) He waited until the end of his term, despite having had the military's internal report on desegregation on his desk for three years. In fact, it was only in what amounted to the final hour of his presidency (again, he very nearly lost the election) that Truman acted. No one knows why, especially since black soldiers had distinguished themselves as patriots during the war, and one would think that the immediate aftermath was the time to act. But wait he did. Sometimes, the politics of the moment requires a president to wait.

There's another point that activists are missing, and that's Afghanistan. President Obama is currently engaged in a tug of war with the military brass, and with one of his key generals, the NATO commander Gen. MacCrystal, over whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan. And since any Democratic president, unfortunately, starts with a military leadership that is skeptical of him, Obama needs this period in his presidency to establish a good working relationship with the military. One of President Clinton's gravest mistakes was to strike out immediately, pushing to overturn the ban on gays in the military, which met with the immediate and virulent opposition of the military establishment. They pressed hard on Congress, and Congress responded with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Clinton, in effect, brought DADT on himself, by not taking the time to establish his bona fides, and his understanding of the military he was elected to lead. In other words, he did the opposite of Harry Truman, who put non-discrimination on a track that the military had some part in laying out, even if reluctantly. And it didn't hurt that Truman was himself a military veteran (of World War I) who had just won World War II.

It's not that Obama cannot do anything about DADT. (He can send a bill to Congress and push for it, though it would mean putting other priorities, like jobs and the economy, climate change, etc., on the back burner while red state Senators cower under the threat of the renewed culture wars...) but to say that "with the stroke of a pen" he can do everything you want, right now, damn the torpedoes, is just not true.

Barack Obama is in fact, doing what Truman did -- giving the military the opportunity to lead on the policy, which Sec. Gates and Jim Jones have said they're doing. Once he has a buy-in with the Pentagon, he'll be in a stronger position with the generals, and versus more conservative members of the Senate. If he can do "job one," and kick-start the economy and jobs, which impacts every American, straight and gay, he'll be in a stronger political position to push forward on this issue. Until then, activists are asking him to sacrifice his presidency for a single constituency, at a time when most Americans are asking, what's in this "change" business for them.

(Cross-posted at The Reid Report)

Kill Bill: Liberals may need to kill healthcare to save it

Wed, 9 Sep 2009 11:09:22 -0400

I don't know what the president is going to say tonight in his joint address to Congress. But after the "summer of crazy," in which the president and his team lost the communications battle against a lunatic smorgasbord of charges, from death panels to socialism, and with an administration that even up to yesterday, was still lamely talking "bipartisanship," I'm not what you'd call hopeful.

Ted Kennedy has passed on, and the White House has yet to utter a word about the bill he essentially wrote for the Senate HELP committee. The public option is "a great tool" but not essential to the final product according to Robert Gibbs (both in his press conference yesterday and on NPR this morning.) And Gibbs insists that the president tonight will not "focus on the negative" by issuing veto threats. Instead, says Gibbs, he'll talk about positive stuff most people can agree on. Well isn't that nice.

Well I didn't get a chance to sign that petition of Obama staffers, donors and volunteers (I was on staff for less than a month toward the end of the campaign,) but I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments in it. If the president tonight stands before a joint session of Congress and the American people, and repeats the now tired (and ineffective) litany of well worn phrases that have characterized his team's attempts to explain healthcare reform ("if you like your healthcare, you can keep it ... insurance companies won't deny pre-existing conditions ... we want a bipartisan bill ... blah blah blah...) I think I'm going to turn off the TV, because that's not change I can believe in.

And far be it from me to grant any legitimacy to the tea party nutjobs, but I think there's one thing that the Paulites and I agree on: the idea of the federal government ordering me to purchase health insurance is not just objectionable, it's a deal breaker. Now my objection is different from the tea party crowd's. Unlike them, I want this president to succeed. In fact, I think that his success is vital to the country's. They on the other hand, are channeling the vitriol and insanity of people like Glenn Beck and the man he's quickly eclipsing: Rush Limbaugh. And they simply don't want government involved in healthcare delivery at all. In fact, peel away the layers of dishonesty and their dishonorable red-baiting of the president and Democrats on the issue, and you'll soon discover that these people also would like to do away with Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Not so with me. I like "socialized medicine." It seems to work quite nicely at the VA, and for senior citizens (who during this debate are clinging to the Medicare like it's running away.) What I don't want is for the federal government ordering me to purchase the product of privately-owned, under-regulated corporations whose historic proclivity has been to rip people off, deny them coverage, and scrimp on their care when they need it most. Insurance is, to me, the biggest scam ever invented. You pay them a fee, and if nothing bad happens to you, they keep your money. If something bad does happen to you, they use every bureaucratic trick in the book to find ways of not paying you. Strengthening such a system by feeding another 50 million people into the existing insurance industry sink hole is not exactly what I'd call reform. Rather, such a scheme sounds like a massive government subsidy -- to insurance companies.

It's bad enough that I can be fined for not having private auto insurance if pulled over by the police. But at least there, not having insurance doesn't just potentially harm me, it potentially harms another driver. In the case of health insurance, if I'm going to be forced to buy it, at the threat of fines, I damned well better have the option of giving my money to an entity I own -- in other words, a "public" insurance company owned by me and other taxpayers. Then, at least, I would feel that I'm parting with my limited resources for the common good, and feeding those reources into an entity whose only motivation is healthcare, rather than the enormous profits health insurance companies earn off the sick and the dying. I ought to have that choice. Others, who prefer to give their money to Aetna or Blue Cross, or United Healthcare, can choose to spend their money there.

That's why it's called an option.

So Mr. President, I say no more pussyfooting. You're either for real reform or you're not; you're either with us (the American people) or with the insurance companies. All of the "smart people" in the Washington press corps insist that a public option cannot and will not pass. Fine. Then I hope that the progressive caucus in the House of Representatives will use the nuclear option -- vote against any bill at all and kill the whole thing. Yes, such a move would hand the president a stinging defeat. Yes, right wingers and tea baggers would rejoice. But in the end, the White House would be forced to re-evaluate its priorities, and if it still wants healthcare reform, it would have to do so though the actual exercise of power, rather than through desperate negotiation with legislatively irrelevant Republicans who at the end of the day, are never -- ever -- going to negotiate with this president in good faith. It's time for President Obama to wake up, shake off this bipartisan nonsense, get control of the quisling moderates in his party and start governing like he means it. Jettison the GOP and push through real reform -- the reform that was promised last fall.

Otherwise, I vote we deep six the whole damned thing.

Cross-posted at The Reid Report

In Kennedy's honor: three simple steps to get health reform

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:08:18 -0400

The Kennedy brothers are all gone, but Democrats can fulfill
Teddy's last wish.

With Ted Kennedy's passing, the burden of fulfilling his life's work -- making sure that every American has access to decent, basic healthcare, something any civilized society should provide -- falls to the members of his party, particularly his fellow United States Senators. Assuming that Senate Republicans, even those who called Kennedy a friend, and who claim, with furrowed brows and wringing hands, that if only Teddy were there, healthcare reform would have been a done deal (something no serious person believes, given the state of the Republican Party) won't go along with any bill, no matter how watered down, here is what Democrats should do now.

1. When the recess is over on September 8th, Harry Reid should move immediately to dissolve the "gang of six." The rump committee within the Senate Finance Committee which Lawrence O'Donnell and other Hill experts claim is the only committee the "really counts" in drafting a healthcare bill, is DOA, no matter what Max Baucus says. Because the Republicans on the subcommittee are now admittedly committed only to delaying or killing any bill (or in the case of Olympia Snowe, to rendering it inert,) there is no longer any point to letting these six, who represent just 3 percent of the U.S. population, continue to waste the country's time pretending to negotiate, when there are members of the full committee who represent much more populous states, whose economies depend much more on a full healthcare solution, not weak, rural "co-ops." The Senate majority leader should be a man, can the rump committee (or request, firmly, that Baucus do so,) and redirect the issue to the full Finance Committee.

Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee:

MAX BAUCUS, MT
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, WV
KENT CONRAD, ND
JEFF BINGAMAN, NM
JOHN F. KERRY, MA
BLANCHE L. LINCOLN, AR
RON WYDEN, OR
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, NY
DEBBIE STABENOW, MI
MARIA CANTWELL, WA
BILL NELSON, FL
ROBERT MENENDEZ, NJ
THOMAS CARPER, DE

Republicans on the committee:

WHO CARES?

2. Strip the Finance Committee of the supposed power to write its own bill. President Obama should push Harry Reid to honor Ted Kennedy's memory by telling the Senate Finance Committee that their time is up, and that they owe it to their fallen colleague to give the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee bill -- which was crafted via Chris Dodd per Ted Kennedy's priorities -- a straight up or down vote in the Senate Finance Committee. There are 13 Democrats and just 10 Republicans on that committee, of whom Max Baucus is the most conservatives. With the appropriate amount of leadership (or pressure), from inside the Senate and from those of us who those Senators work for, the bill should pass the committee on a party-line vote, even if Baucus votes no. Bernie Sanders has championed this approach, and he's right. (Read Slate's assessment of the HELP bill here.)

3. Send the Kennedy bill out of finance and to the full Senate. The president should call upon his friend and mentor, Dick Durbin, to find him 50 votes for the Kennedy bill. That's all Dick Durbin should be doing until that bill passes. We out here in the real world can take care of the politics, by pledging to work our asses off to vocally support (including in letters, emails, on radio and on the Internet,) and then to volunteer, fundraise, knock on doors, and otherwise put in the effort to re-elect any Democratic Senator who votes for the bill and who's up in 2010 (and to equally strongly oppose the re-election of any who don't. I think it's called democracy.)

That's it. Three simple steps -- dissolve the gang of six, tell Finance their time is up, and get a full vote on the Kennedy bill, even if it takes using reconciliation.

Will a "Kennedycare" bill make Limbaugh's day? Who bloody well cares? If he ever O.D.'s on that Oxycontin, or chokes a Fat Burger down the wrong esophageal pipe, at least he'll be guaranteed good care should Clear Channel get tired of paying his premiums.

The summer of crazy is almost over. When it is, Democrats need to stop screwing around and get on with it.

Meanwhile, re-linking this great piece on how LBJ got 'er done on Medicare.

Cross-posted at The Reid Report.

Great job, Bill Clinton

Wed, 5 Aug 2009 10:08:01 -0400

I was tough on Bill Clinton (and Hillary Clinton) during the 2008 campaign, on my blog and on the radio. Like many African-Americans, I had what you might call a disharmonious divergence from my former status as a "Clinton Democrat," due to the harshness of the primary campaign with Barack Obama. So I think it's only fair that I be equally effusive in praising the former president when he does good. Well, Bill Clinton, you "done good."

According to NBC's Andrea Mitchell (on MSNBC this morning), Clinton stepped in when negotiations being worked through by his former vice president, Current TV chief Al Gore, went as far as they could go -- North Korea didn't want Gore to come and retrieve the detained journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who had been held since March. They wanted the former president. And so, this time according to CNN, after "due dilligence" and a briefing by the Obama administration, the husband of our secretary of state flew to North Korea, gave the wacky NK dictator his photo op, and brought the two women home to their families. I'm sure more details of the dramatic rescue mission will unfold (journalists love this stuff, and I'm sure the made-for-TV movie, books and feature films are already being cooked up in the minds of New York and Hollywood...) but for now, what we know is that a coordinated mission between three once disparate factions of the Democratic Party -- the Gore, Clinton and Obama wings -- came together with a phenomenal result:

I'm sure right wingers won't be able to bring themselves to be happy for the families of these women, or to join the rest of the nation in thanking the former president on behalf of all decent members of the human family. But no matter. Who needs them. Thank you, President Clinton, and congratulations on a job well done.

Once again, I think we've established that Republicans may make a lot more noise, but Democrats actually get things done.

Cross-posted at The Reid Report.

How the Democrats are screwing up healthcare reform

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:07:37 -0400

With major healthcare reform sputtering as the clock runs out on the current session on Capitol Hill, it's tempting to blame the Republicans for what appears, for now, to be the failure of the 111th Congress to deliver on 60-odd years of trying to get universal healthcare for Americans, the way every other (and we often assume lesser) Western power has managed to do. After all, Republicans (and some top Democrats) are being paid handsomely in the way of campaign cash from the major pharmaceutical, insurance and medical lobbies to stop any attempts to reform a system that is making them very, very rich. But blaming the GOP is too easy. The "Party of No" is doing exactly what it's supposed to do -- stopping reform any way it can, serving the well-to-do, and using whatever scare tactic and underhanded scheme to convince the easily duped that they really, really, do love the claim-denying, coverage-dropping, premium-raising insurance companies currently standing between them and their doctor. Democrats, on the other hand, are supposed to know better. The party of JFK, RFK and TeddyK, was supposed to be able to deliver once it finally got control of both houses of Congress. That's the meal we were sold in 2006, and well ... it's 2009, and the table's looking pretty damned empty (and not just on healthcare -- ditto on anything to do with investigating lawbreaking by the former administration.)

So why can't the Democrats get their act together and get health reform done? I'll give you five reasons.

1. Democrats don't know how to wield power. If there were 60 members of the Republican Senate caucus instead of 60 Democrats, Republicans held 59% of the House, and a Republican president wanted something done -- no matter how ridiculous -- would we even be having this conversation? One-word answer: Iraq. The fact is, even with sliding poll numbers, Americans still trust President Obama and Democrats far more than they do Republicans when it comes to healthcare. But you wouldn't know it from the media coverage, or from the way Democrats shape their own narrative. Democrats seem terrified of embracing the very progressive ideas Barack Obama got elected with: including the public option. The minute Republicans swipe at it as "government healthcare," the entire Democratic caucus, with a few exceptions, seems to shrink, measurably.

2. Harry Reid is a wuss. If Nancy Peolosi was running the Senate instead of the House, would a handful of "blue dog" Democrats be able to dominate and stymie the process as effectively as they have? To be sure, Pelosi has blue dog headaches of her own, but her leadership style seems heavier handed than Reid's, and in the game of herding cats that is politics, it also seems to be more effective than Reid's gentlemanly bargaining and begging. (Senate Democrats are so loath to play hardball, they have all-but abandoned the budget reconciliation option, giving the wee Republican minority the power to block any reforms -- think Republicans would have hesitated to use whatever parliamentary tool they could in order to do George W. Bush's bidding?)

3. Democrats have no message. The president has a message (at least I think he does...) Liberals have a message (universal care, public option, or else.) Moveon has a really poorly done message (something about a spiraling football.) The DNC has the tired Harry and Louise routine and a lot of warm, fuzzy talk about how this is "gonna get done" (nicely, but who the hell knows how.) And the blue dogs have a message, too ("the insurance companies won't let me.") But the party as a whole looks about as organized as a squirrel Olympics. They're all over the place, while the Republicans have been very effective at using variations on a simple theme that's designed to scare the hell out of people: "'government run' healthcare will destroy our democracy, outlaw your doctor, and kill your grandma." Would it kill my party to remind the public that the post office is the public option on mail delivery, and not only does it work out pretty well in getting you your mail every day, it hasn't yet killed off FedEx or UPS? ... or to put out a simple ad saying:

"In the healthcare debate, the Republican Party has taken the side of the insurance companies. The same companies who deny claims, drop coverage for the sick and elderly, and refuse to cover people with pre-existing conditions. The president wants health coverage for all Americans, at an affordable cost. Call your Senator or Congressman today, and ask them. Whose side are you on?"

4. Some Democrats are a lot like Republicans. Go through the CREW list of who got what from big pharma, big insurance, and the major medical interests, and there you'll find our friends the blue dogs, plus an ample share of the Democratic leadership. Some Democrats are in such hawk to the insurance-medical lobby, they might as well switch parties, and their decisions on reform, particularly the public option, are driven largely by insurance industry concerns, possibly dooming the public option. Some of them even admit it.

5. Like a first-time film director, the Obama administration appears to have lost control of the set, the script, the actors and the extras. With healthcare, as with the stimulus bill, Democrats appear to be frantically running amok, trying to find places to stuff cherished ideas from the '80s that they weren't able to get done because they didn't have the White House, or which died during the 90s because of Bill Clinton's personal chaos. And now that they do have the whole government, theoretically, and having kowtowed to George W. Bush for eight years, Hill Dems have discovered that they want to be the first branch of government after all. The fact that the Congressional circus, rather than the cool discipline of the Obama administration, is the prevailing narrative is a sign that Team Obama has dropped a very major ball. If the president wants to salvage healthcare reform, he needs to grab the reins, state in detail of what ideas he wants to see in a plan (consumer protections? fine. public option? Great! employer mandates? whatever. man, just tell us what you want!...) Then, Obama needs to determine the message, impose some discipline, and put that wild donkey of his in check. In fact, with Democrats and Republicans mercifully heading out of town, August is just the time to do it.

Cross-posted at The Reid Report.