No, Lindsey Graham Would NOT Be The First Gay President

Yesterday Lindsey Graham said— with a straight face— that after he beats the hapless conservative Democrat running against him in November, Brad Hutto, he would start seriously exploring a run for the presidency. Although he went out of his way to declare Marco Rubio too young, inexperienced and unqualified for the job, what most people walked away talking about was “Oh, the first gay president.” But even if Lindsey were to win the Republican nomination, which is inconceivable, and then go on to beat Hillary, even less likely, he still wouldn’t be the first gay president.

Forget the Abraham Lincoln rumors about him and Josh Speed. It was Lincoln’s predecessor, James Buchanan who always claimed, like Lindsey, to be a “confirmed bachelor.” It was a time when gay marriage was less accepted than it is today and Buchanan kept his 1833-1844 gay marriage to William Rufus King a secret. King was, for six weeks until he died, Franklin Pierce’s Vice President and Vice President types weren’t supposed to be gay either. So if Lindsey win’s he’ll be another gay president, not the first gay president.

There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too — he was not far into the closet.

Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual. Fifteen years ago, historian John Howard, author of Men Like That, a pioneering study of queer culture in Mississippi, shared with me the key documents, including Buchanan’s May 13, 1844, letter to a Mrs. Roosevelt. Describing his deteriorating social life after his great love, William Rufus King, senator from Alabama, had moved to Paris to become our ambassador to France, Buchanan wrote:

I am now “solitary and alone,” having no companion in the house with me. I have gone a wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any one of them. I feel that it is not good for man to be alone; and should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection.

Despite such evidence, one reason why Americans find it hard to believe Buchanan could have been gay is that we have a touching belief in progress. Our high school history textbooks’ overall story line is, “We started out great and have been getting better ever since,” more or less automatically. Thus we must be more tolerant now than we were way back in the middle of the 19th century! Buchanan could not have been gay then, else we would not seem more tolerant now.

This ideology of progress amounts to a chronological form of ethnocentrism. Thus chronological ethnocentrism is the belief that we now live in a better society, compared to past societies. Of course, ethnocentrism is the anthropological term for the attitude that our society is better than any other society now existing, and theirs are OK to the degree that they are like ours.

Chronological ethnocentrism plays a helpful role for history textbook authors: it lets them sequester bad things, from racism to the robber barons, in the distant past. Unfortunately for students, it also makes history impossibly dull, because we all “know” everything turned out for the best. It also makes history irrelevant, because it separates what we might learn about, say, racism or the robber barons in the past from issues of the here and now. Unfortunately for us all, just as ethnocentrism makes us less able to learn from other societies, chronological ethnocentrism makes us less able to learn from our past. It makes us stupider.

Daniel Larison, covering Lindsey’s announcement of his forthcoming presidential bid for the American Conservative, wasn’t jumping up and down applauding. The title of his piece gives it all away: Lindsey Graham: The Embodiment of Everything Wrong with the GOP.

Graham is kidding himself if he thinks he could be the nominee, so I’m not sure what the point of this would be. The likely 2016 field will already be filled with reliably hawkish candidates. Graham distinguishes himself from that field in that he has never encountered a foreign intervention that he didn’t like and by being wildly out of step with most Republicans on immigration. Those will make him an easy target and useful foil for all of the others, who will be able to point at the second “amigo” and say something like, “I want to keep America secure, but I don’t want to bomb a new country every five minutes as Sen. Graham does.” A Graham bid is the closest one can get to re-running a McCain campaign, and Republicans are even less interested in doing that than they are in giving Romney another chance. Worse for the party, he is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the party, especially when it comes to the issues of foreign policy and immigration. He is the walking reminder of why most Americans shouldn’t trust Republicans to conduct foreign policy and why most conservatives don’t trust their party leaders.

On foreign policy, Graham is one of the two worst senators still serving. Let’s remember that Graham isn’t merely very hawkish, but habitually resorts to panicked, overwrought descriptions of every threat and conjures up fantastical worst-case scenarios that are completely unmoored from reality.

…Graham’s alarmism and threat inflation may briefly frighten some people into listening to his bad policy ideas, but it wouldn’t take long for many voters to see through this act and to realize that Graham overstates every danger and likewise overreacts to everything that happens. Regardless of one’s views on policy, that isn’t what anyone wants in a president.

So Lindsey Graham won’t even be the second gay president. Neither will Aaron Schock, Patrick McHenry or any other sick, fear-driven, sniveling little closet queen. The second gay president is going to be even more open about it than James Buchanan. I have my fingers crossed for Mark Pocan!