The Obama Straddle, in Three Acts

As riveting images and stories pour out of Iran, the Obama administration's lack of moral clarity today is getting to me. As in:

The State Department asked Twitter to defer maintenance so that Iranians could keep using the site to organize and inform, but Obama could only bring himself to say that he found the violence "deeply troubling," a muted response in the circumstances, as my colleague John Dickerson pointed out.

The administration will announce some benefits for the partners of gay federal employees today, but not full health insurance, and last week Obama lawyers filed a brief arguing for the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which Obama the candidate spoke out against. Gay rights advocates are furious, and rightfully so. The suit the administration responded to—a challenge in federal court to California's bar against same-sex marriage--is premature and a mistake. But the administration didn't have to go this far in batting it away. The NYT reports that "a White House spokesman said that it was standard practice for the administration to back laws that are challenged in court—even those it does not agree with." Maybe, but when a president really objects to a law, he makes an exception.

In a 2003 speech that Charlie Savage reports on, Judge Sonia Sotomayor doubted the legality of expansive wiretapping under the Patriot Act, but she also said “one can certainly justify” the secret detention of enemy combatants, and the curtailing of their legal rights compared to regular criminals, “under precedents and current law.” Actually there was scant Supreme Court precedent on that question at the time, and Sotomayor could have easily pointed out that the law was unsettled. I know all the straddling is consistent with Obama's famed pragmatism. I know that's what we bought when we elected him. But today, it feels lame and tedious.

Tags: defense of marriage act, executive power, gay rights, Iranian election, Sonia Sotomayor

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Emily Bazelon is a founding editor of Double X, and a writer and editor at Slate.

Comments

Listen to Iranian reformers

By: PGofHSM | Thu, 06/18/2009 - 08:56

Activists in Iran have been saying for years that it does not help their cause for the U.S. to be seen as siding with them. That's why Ahmadinejad and his cronies are so desperate to claim that the U.S. is meddling: if they can paint the protests as being a CIA plant, support for them among regular Iranians will drain away. Obama is doing exactly what he should be doing, and this situation makes me so glad that McCain is not in the White House singing "Bombombom, bombomb Iran," or having the presidential bully pulpit to make his absurd statements about how the U.S. needs to "lead" in this situation. No, the U.S. needs to keep the way clear for Iranians to lead themselves -- exactly what happened with ensuring that Twitter remained a viable means of communication for them.

Also, I really expect better from a trained attorney, particularly one who follows Constitutional law, than a continuation of the erroneous claim that "but when a president really objects to a law, he makes an exception [to his obligation to defend Congressional statutes]." When President Bush was presented with the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to sign, he explicitly said that he thought parts of it were unconstitutional, but he would leave it to the Supreme Court to sort it out. Then he sent Solicitor General Ted Olson to argue for the constitutionality of the entire law. Moreover, Obama has never asserted that he thinks DOMA is *unconstitutional*.

As Ms. Bazelon should know, a law may be incredibly unwise as a policy matter (and DOMA creates serious inconsistencies between state and federal law that could lead to lost tax revenue; see http://www.lgbtbib.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?tag=marriage%20DOMA&blog...), but that doesn't mean it's unconstitutional under existing precedents.

Iran and moral ambiguity

By: becki82 | Wed, 06/17/2009 - 15:11

I understand the urge a lot of Americans feel to speak out against what has transpired in Iran since last Friday, but if we want to support the reform movement there, the absolute best thing we can do toward that end is stay out of it, for now. Every serious analyst of Iran-U.S. relations I've read/heard has come to this conclusion. As someone who's spent a few years now studying this topic, I breathe a sigh of relief every day that goes by without the Obama administration making any significant comments about the situation. It may be more appropriate at a later time to get more involved, if only rhetorically, but Obama's approach so far has by no means demonstrated a lack of moral clarity. Just the opposite, in my opinion, especially when our information about what has actually transpired there is still so limited. We don't need to be making counterproductive official statements about events we don't fully understand yet just so we can say we did.

Obama and Iran

By: Hypatia | Wed, 06/17/2009 - 14:52

In his Cairo speech, Obama essentially promised that the United States would now strive to its utmost to avoid offending Muslims. Considering there are angry Muslims on both sides of this debate, he's in kind of a pickle. I feel for the guy.