Are The Democrats Still The Party Of Harry Truman? Or Is It Just Another Wall Street Party Now? NAFTA 2.0

In October 1948, President Harry Truman was stumping Minnesota, on behalf of both his own successful re-election campaign and a Senate bid by then Minneapolis mayor, Hubert Humphrey. During an appearance in St. Paul on the 13th, Truman delivered an address at the Municipal Auditorium which was carried nationally on radio. It included this critique of the Republican Party, a critique that most Democrats wouldn't be able to use today, thanks in large part to Bill and Hillary Clinton, among other neoliberals, including Status Quo Joe, Mayo Pete and Bloomberg, who have infected the Democratic Party and changed it fundamentally-- and not for the better:

Today the forces of liberalism face a crisis. The people of the United States must make a choice between two ways of living-- a decision which will affect us the rest of our lives and our children and our grandchildren after us.

On the other side, there is the Wall Street way of life and politics. Trust the leader! Let big business take care of prices and profits! Measure all things by money! That is the philosophy of the masters of the Republican Party.

Well, I have been studying the Republican Party for over 12 years at close hand in the Capital of the United States. And by this time, I have discovered where the Republicans stand on most of the major issues.

Since they won’t tell you themselves, I am going to tell you.

They approve of the American farmer-- but they are willing to help him go broke.

They stand four-square for the American home-- but not for housing.

They are strong for labor-- but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights.

They favor a minimum wage-- the smaller the minimum the better.

They indorse educational opportunity for all-- but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools.

They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine-- for people who can afford them.

They approve of Social Security benefits-- so much so that they took them away from almost a million people.

They believe in international trade-- so much so that they crippled our reciprocal trade program, and killed our International Wheat Agreement.

They favor the admission of displaced persons-- but only within shameful racial and religious limitations.

They consider electric power a great blessing-- but only when the private power companies get their rake-off.

They say TVA is wonderful-- but we ought never to try it again.

They condemn “cruelly high prices”-- but fight to the death every effort to bring them down.

They think the American standard of living is a fine thing-- so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people.

And they admire the Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.

Now, my friends, that is the Wall Street Republican way of life. But there is another way-- there is another way-- the Democratic way, the way of the Democratic Party.

At one time-- in Truman's day for example-- the chart below would have looked much different. These are the current members of the House who have taken the most bribes from the Finance Sector-- the class of miscreants FDR labeled "the banksters"-- in the 2018 cycle. These are the only ones who took at least a million in bribes:

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $2,253,625
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $2,134,472
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $1,718,006
• Mikie Sherrill (Blue Dog-NJ)- $1,549,650
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- $1,537,784
• Kevin Brady (R-TX)- $1,438,794
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $1,430,888
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $1,416,015
• Antonio Delgado (D-NY)- $1,290,587
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- $1,283,038
• Elissa Slotkin (New Dem-MI)- $1,270,853
• French Hill (R-AR)- $1,183,912
• Josh Harder (New Dem-CA)- $1,145,089
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $1,070,719
• Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA)- $1,067,278
• Lee Zeldin (R-NY)- $1,021,840
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $1,020,550
• Tom Malinowski (New Dem-NJ)- $1,006,027

Bribes like this can really mount up in a few cycles. Since being elected to Congress, the super-corrupt GOP minority leader Kevin McCarthy has gorged himself with $9,508,537 in bankster "contributions." The next biggest career criminal along these lines is majority leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, with $7,356,624 finding its way into his campaign coffers. The third biggest criminal recipient of Wall Street dough was dispatched by AOC last year. Joe Crowley had gobbled up $7,217,725 in bribes from the banksters. Am I saying these politicians should be bundled off to prison in the next half hour to await trial? Yes, I am. And I'm not the only one who opposes politicians taking bribes from financial institutions that are charged with regulating.

Several progressive candidates are running on platforms built on strict opposition to Congressional bribery. Cenk Uygur has been studying congressional corruption for many years. Now he's running for Congress in a wide open field in which all the front-runners, both Democrat and Republican-- are on the record approving of bribery, although they insist it isn't bribery. I asked Cenk to explain why it is bribery and what he plans to do about opposing it when he's in Congress. "No one thinks JP Morgan Chase is giving a politician money for their health or for charity," he said flatly. "Everyone knows it's a bribe. And if they give that same politician a second 'contribution' that means they got a return on investment. And to be fair to them, an American politician is the most profitable thing you can buy. And they're almost all up for sale. This is a sick system that has to be fixed immediately. I'm running in CA-25 to make sure we end the obvious bribery and the brazen corruption."

And speaking of which, Pelosi and her team announced this morning-- on the same day that the Democrats announced just 2 impeachment charges against Trump-- that the House Dems will back Trump's new NAFTA 2.0. Remember, corporate Democrats like Pelosi always go for these sell-out trade deals, so this wasn't unexpected. It's days like today that I especially appreciate Bernie's call for a political revolution, something that no other candidate is even close to understanding, let alone doing.

I spoke to at least a dozen progressives today. Most said they feel uncomfortable with the Trump trade bill but that they will go along with it because... Trumka:

Make no mistake, we demanded a trade deal that benefits workers and fought every single day to negotiate that deal; and now we have secured an agreement that working people can proudly support.

I am grateful to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies on the USMCA working group, along with Senate champions like Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden, for standing strong with us throughout this process as we demanded a truly enforceable agreement. I also commend Ambassador Robert Lighthizer for being a straight shooter and an honest broker as we worked toward a resolution.

Why the sell-out from Trumka? I'm hearing the big sweetener to get him on board was the deal on hitching Butch Lewis and Mineworker pension fixes that Richard Neal floated a few months ago. So far, just one of the progressives I spoke with said he's inclined to vote against it anyway. Just one. I hope he can persuade some others. And even if labor is happy, environmental and Climate groups sure aren't.

Dear Representative,

On behalf of our organizations’ over 9 million members and supporters, we strongly urge you to oppose a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that fails to meet the baseline standards for environmental and climate protection that the environmental community has consistently called for.

Correcting NAFTA’s environmental failures and addressing climate change in modern trade agreements is a top priority for our organizations. For over 25 years, NAFTA has contributed to climate change, toxic pollution, economic insecurity, and social inequity. We will vigorously oppose any deal that would perpetuate NAFTA’s track record of helping corporations dump pollution, outsource jobs, push fossil fuel dependency, and undermine hard-fought environmental protections.

Before, during, and after the Trump administration’s renegotiation of NAFTA, we and other leading environmental organizations repeatedly named specific changes to curb NAFTA’s environmental damage. The administration ignored nearly all of our concerns. The deal that the Trump administration produced last year-- the United States-Mexico- Canada Agreement (USMCA)-- would encourage further outsourcing of pollution and jobs, offer handouts to notorious corporate polluters, and prolong Trump’s polluting legacy for years. The deal not only fails to mention, acknowledge, or address the climate crisis, but would actually contribute to it.

Since this summer, a team of Democratic members of Congress has worked to try to eliminate these and other fundamental problems by negotiating meaningful changes to the Trump administration’s deal. We have actively supported this effort with detailed recommendations to achieve the following essential environmental priorities:

• Binding climate standards, backed by 110 members of Congress, to curb outsourcing of climate pollution and jobs and to ensure the U.S. and its trading partners fulfill commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement
• Binding clean air, water, and land standards to halt the dumping of pollution in Mexico

• Obligations to fulfill commitments under an array of key multilateral environmental agreements

• A new, independent and binding enforcement system to stop environmental violations

• Removal of corporate polluter handouts that support tar sands oil and fracked gas

• Elimination of broad rights for corporate polluters to sue Mexico over environmental policies in tribunals

• Elimination of rules that would help corporate polluters weaken and delay our environmental regulations 


In case you missed it yesterday, please take a look at this Twitter thread from Paul Krugman:

And, one wag cautioned a few minutes ago that this is probably a better deal than what progressives could have gotten in a Status Quo Joe or Mayo Pete presidency. Now that really is sad.

Kicker: Media is already laughing: "Democrats are saying Trump is an existential threat on one hand and helping him with his trade deal on the other."

Pelosi's Warns Against Progressives-- Progressives Need To Man Up And Warn About A Real Danger: Pelosi And Her Special Interests-Politics

Pelosi's in DC today-- back from Britain, where she spoke at the London School of Economics and laid out her political vision-- one that has, over the years, devolved from hearty progressivism to abject, loot-inspired centrism. She's officially one of them now, not one of us. In recent weeks she's been inviting actual progressives into her office to threaten them, insisting they not endorse Bernie. One gentleman who gently pushed back against the dictator, emerged white as a ghost; he changed his mind about endorsing Bernie for the time being.

Pelosi, Trump and McTurtle are the 3 most detested politicians in America. The country would be way better off without any of them. Now that would be an awesome Grand Bargain! Maybe Pelosi is envious that Trump is so much more hated than she is in Britain. It's the only way I can describe her jaunt over there during the congressional spring break, a jaunt that saw her inappropriately interfering in U.K. politics over Brexit and in the fight between Labour and the Conservatives. The Jerusalem Post reported that Pelosi "made combating antisemitism on the left a centerpiece of her stop in London. She met with three members of Parliament who defected from the Labour Party in large part because they said its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, did not adequately address antisemitism within the party. She also met separately with Corbyn and raised the importance of fighting antisemitism in that meeting as well." I guess she told him what a great job of not supporting Ilhan Omar she did.

While she was over there she stopped at the London School of Economics "to set out a centrist vision that could help woo Republican voters frustrated with Trump's approach. For every Republican voter she woos with her centrist agenda, we'll discourage 5 Democrats... with her centrist agenda.

More senile by the day and crazy as a loon, she warned that Democrats must avoid the "menace" of liberal policies pushed by rising political stars if it wants to beat President Donald Trump in the 2020 election."

The unwritten rules that Trump never ever plays by, kept her from criticizing her overseas-- what a joke-- but she did feel free to criticize AOC instead.

"When we won this election, it wasn't in districts like mine or Alexandria's," Pelosi said in reference to the November midterms in which the Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives.

"Those are districts that are solidly Democratic-- this glass of whatever would win with a D next to its name in those districts," said the Speaker after picking up a glass off a coffee table.

I hope Shahid Buttar is listening that his primary opponent thinks her constituents would vote for a glass of water. At least it explains why they're stuck with her as she morphed from being a progressive to being a mainstay of the status quo, not the except opposite of a progressive. Nancy Pelosi, whether she wants to look in the mirror or not, is an ex-progressive today... a self-loathing ex-progressive who never really believed anyway. She was a good tactician and got some intermediary things done along the way, but now she's in the way-- in the way of Medicare-For-All, in the Way of a Green New Deal, in the way of a $15 minimum wage and in the way of replacing Trump with a progressive.

Pelosi touted her own liberal upbringing and accomplishments representing the deeply Democratic voters of San Francisco.

"I can compare my liberal credentials across the board. I said to them: 'Anything you're about, I got that sign in my basement 20 years ago'," Pelosi said.

But "what we are saying is, to have a message that appeals to people in a way that does not menace them," she said.

"I share those values-- but we must win."

She does not share those values. She goes to work every single day and undermines those values. That she still may believe that she's a progressive is actually scary, considering what a total wretch she has turned into. She even did it on her vacation in Europe.

Democrats don't win by pretending to be Democrats. Did she forget? Allow me to string together some famous quotes by Harry Truman that Pelosi needs to be reminded of: "Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better... America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand." Let me add 2 by Howard Dean: "The way we're going to win elections in this country is not to become Republican lite. The way we're going to win elections in this country is to stand up for what we believe in... So what we-- all we really want, I think, from the so-called Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is really to stand up for what we believe in... I hate Republicans and everything they stand for." When Democrats run as Republican-right candidates, they lose because people would rather vote for a real Republican. Pelosi should know all this.

Sinking the Sanders Campaign Beneath a Wave of Silence

The press, covering their imagined version of the Sanders campaign (source)

by Gaius Publius

You knew that "the chatterers" — writer Steve Hendricks' name for corporate-employed pundits and analysts — would try to sink the Sanders campaign. As Hendricks points out below, their bosses want nothing less, and employees live to serve.

Hendricks, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review:

On the eve of the 1948 presidential election, Newsweek asked the 50 reporters on President Truman’s campaign train to forecast the winner. To a man they went the way the Chicago Tribune infamously would on election night: “Dewey defeats Truman.” Lay historians will recall that not only did Truman defeat Dewey; he clobbered him. Sorting out how the media got it so wrong, The New York Times’ James Reston concluded that he and his brethren had been a lot like the aloof Governor Dewey himself, who was said to be the only man who could strut sitting down. Dewey played well with plutocrats and publishers. “[J]ust as he was too isolated with other politicians,” Reston wrote, “so we were too isolated with other reporters; and we, too, were far too impressed by the tidy statistics of the polls.”

This was true, but it fell to A. J. Liebling, the nonpareil of The New Yorker, to pick out the crucial vice that Reston and similarly minded colleagues overlooked. “A great wave of contrition hit the Washington newspaper world in the days immediately following the joyous catastrophe,” Liebling wrote, “and men swore that they would go out and dig for the real truths of politics as they never had dug before. But few publishers encouraged them in their good resolutions, and most of them are back again running errands designed to bolster their bosses’ new illusions.”

As Hendricks points out, Liebling’s most memorable bon mot is also his most eternal — "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

The "bosses' illusions" about the Sanders campaign are that it has no chance to succeed, and that it should be given no chance. And they're doing their best, the chatterers and their bosses, to give it no chance at all. Hendricks on the wave of silence in the press:

"[That this] crank actually could win” is nearer the mark. But having settled on a prophecy, the media went about covering Sanders so as to fulfill it. The Times, for example, buried his announcement on page A21, even though every other candidate who had declared before then had been put on the front page above the fold. Sanders’s straight-news story didn’t even crack 700 words, compared to the 1,100 to 1,500 that Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Hillary Clinton got. As for the content, the Times’ reporters declared high in Sanders’s piece that he was a long shot for the Democratic nomination and that Clinton was all but a lock. None of the Republican entrants got the long-shot treatment, even though Paul, Rubio, and Cruz were generally polling fifth, seventh, and eighth among Republicans before they announced. ..

There's more about this in the article, including similar coverage by those whom Hendricks calls, not euphemistically, Sanders' "admirers."

"But He's Such a Long-Shot..."

Yet Hendricks firmly believes that Sanders could win, that the Sanders campaign could succeed after all. (I share that belief.) In addition to the "Eugene McCarthy in 1968" argument, which Hendricks doesn't make, there are several strong arguments which Hendricks does make.

First, about those long odds (my emphasis):

The foregoing would be woeful enough even were it true that Sanders has almost no chance of winning, but it’s not true. I’ll skip lightly over the conspicuous fact that any frontrunner can have a Chappaquiddick, a deceptively amplified “scream,” or a plane crash. Instead, let me dwell on the simple fact that over the last 40 years, out of seven races in which the Democratic nomination was up for grabs—races, that is, when a sitting Democrat president wasn’t seeking reelection—underdogs have won the nomination either three or four times (depending on your definition of an underdog) and have gone on to win the presidency more often than favored candidates.

Some of these seekers were long shots indeed. Jimmy Carter was a lightly accomplished governor from a trifling state beyond whose borders he was little known and less regarded. A few weeks before he entered the presidential race, the Harris Poll asked voters their thoughts on 35 potential candidates. Carter was not on the list. After a year of campaigning, just a couple of months before the first primary, he routinely polled 1 percent among Democratic voters and finished eighth in the narrowed field of eight Democrats. But he won all the same because the other guys were Washington insiders, and after Watergate and Vietnam, Democratic voters (and eventually the wider electorate) didn’t want another insider, no matter how often journalists told them they did. If you don’t see a parallel to the present moment—a discontented time of Occupy, Black Lives Matter, Moral Monday, Fight for $15, the People’s Climate March, Move to Amend, and other anti-establishmentarian agitation—you’re either asleep or a publisher.

Michael Dukakis also polled as little as 1 percent just a few months before he announced (Sanders, by the way, was polling 5 to 8 percent at the equivalent stage), which paled beside the Hillary-esque 40 to 50 percent that Gary Hart was drawing. When Hart’s campaign went down with a boatload of bimbo, Dukakis profited, although even then he was no favorite. Shortly before the first primary, he still polled no better than 10 percent, which was toe to toe with the forgettable Paul Simon and 15 points behind both Jesse Jackson and a resurrected Hart, who mounted a brief comeback because Dukakis and all the rest looked so impotent.

Some observers wouldn’t rate Bill Clinton an underdog, mostly because he wasn’t one for long after he hopped into the race. But so slight was the shadow he cast nationally that nine months before the primaries, pollsters weren’t listing him as a potential contender. Even he thought so little of his chances (Mario Cuomo was supposed to run, and to be invincible once he did) that he didn’t announce until five months out. His odds improved from there.

The quixotic Barack Obama entered the race against a juggernaut whose endorsements were so thunderous and war chest so surpassing that many spectators thought the young senator was only trying to make himself known for a future contest. After campaigning all of 2007, he not only failed to advance on Clinton but found himself a little further back, dropping from 24 to 22 percent, while Clinton advanced from 39 to 45 percent. There were rumblings that he should bow out before the first vote so as not to weaken the ineluctable nominee.

That's a pretty decent list of precedents. Of the four, three entered the White House as residents.

What About Clinton's Money?

And then there's the issue of the money, specifically Clinton's money relative to Sanders'. I'll let you read Hendricks' counter-arguments for yourself — start with the paragraph beginning "Spurious though early polls may be." But consider that among the points he makes is this:

But the last contested nomination, in 2008, was itself a huge-money affair, and Obama won despite having started from a worse financial position than Sanders is in now (Clinton had $10 million at the start of 2007, Obama virtually nothing) and having been out-fundraised by Clinton throughout 2007.

Just one data point of many.

Is Sanders Too Far from the "Center"?

Which brings Hendricks to the final argument against Sanders' viability — his distance from the "political center." Hendricks, pointing to several past elections, notes how valuable that distance can be. I agree. His prime example is Michael Dukakis — distant from the center indeed — and he could easily have added Georgia's Jimmy Carter as well, or Arkansas's Bill Clinton.

But consider — what does the "political center" means in modern America? It means the place where the wishes of the One Percenters — of David Koch and Jamie Dimon, for example — overlap each other. The political center of the American people is way to the left of that.

For example, 87% of Republicans want Fast Track and TPP to fail. Republicans want that. And therein lies the real danger of the Sanders campaign — that it does represent the people, a great many of them, and it therefore could easily succeed if it gets any tailwind at all. Hendricks:

Is the day of the IKEA socialist at hand? The chatterers don’t know the answer. What they know is how to do their damnedest to ensure that day doesn’t come too soon.

They can try, the chatterers and their bosses, to sink the campaign beneath a wave of silence, but with impassioned words like these coming from the likes of Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Sanders' core platform has a huge megaphone:

I'm willing to bet that the Warren megaphone, whatever her eventual endorsement ends up being, isn't going away. Nor is coverage of her by "the chatterers." All this bodes well for the Sanders campaign.

(Click here if you'd like to help his campaign. You can adjust the split in any way you like. My collected Bernie Sanders coverage is here.)

GP

Annals of DADT: The verdict of history smiles on Harry Truman for desegregating the U.S. armed forces

Got guts? Today's right-wingers have plenty of gall, but that's not the same thing. Meanwhile the Obama administration, guided by that truly gutless wonder Master Rahm Emanuel, can rarely manage even that. However, Harry Truman, faced with an indefensibly segregated military, did what he knew had to be done, knowing only too well that the reaction wouldn't be friendly.

"My grandfather was appalled that African-American service members had been beaten and lynched upon their return from World War II. They had risked their lives to defend our nation, but were denied the full rights of American citizenship. For him, it was an issue of fairness -- an issue of human rights. He listened to the arguments made by his senior military advisors, men he respected, who had served this country honorably. But he knew what was right and was determined to get it done. . . .

"Extending equal treatment and opportunity to all in our nation’s service, regardless of sexual orientation, is the right thing to do. I hope the example of my grandfather, President Harry Truman, will help our president, Congress, and our military leaders to act with the same courage and conviction to get the job done this year."

-- Clifton Truman Daniel, the oldest grandson

of President Truman, in The Hill

by Ken

"The verdict of history" -- it's a phrase we throw around a lot." Too bad we so rarely take it seriously.

Remember that last frantic, pathetic year in office of Chimpy the Prez, when he more or less gave up playing president and, in what we might call the presidential equivalent of a deathbed conversion, devoted the rest of his time in office (barring some momentary attention he was unaccountably forced to divert in that last autumn to some foolishness about the economy) to a last-ditch effort to polish his "legacy," to redeem his place in history from the savage and unremitting assault he had unleashed on it for seven monstrous years without precedent in the annals of the American republic. The time for him to consider his place in history was while he was dumping the toxic sludge of his mind, heart, and soul upon the country and the world.

Oh, I suspect that some of the archdevils of the Right think they're bad-acting for history. Human waste like "Big Dick" Cheney and "Tiny John" Roberts clearly think they have access to Higher Truths that give them the right -- no, obligation -- to burn a path of destruction through mere earthly reality. But a delusional history constructed from ignorance and psychosis, not to mention plain old dishonesty, really doesn't count.

I haven't made any attempt to maintain any running account -- since I wrote last May, "Can we recall that LGBT military exclusion is a national security issue, not just a "gay" one?" -- of the increasingly unhopeful prospects for repeal of the dreadful military policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, especially as it seemed increasingly likely to be a casualty of the Obama administration's gutlessness, which becomes virtually all-encompassing when it comes to matters that administration insiders really don't much care about. I've been content to leave coverage of the yawning gap between Obama campaign promise and administration delivery on LGBT issues to Howie (here, for example).

I trust that DWT readers have remained aware of the twists and turns over the last year, and that recently, as it appeared that the whole show was headed for the dustbin, a divergent convergence of forces forged a compromise that, for all its shackles and awkwardnesses, might actually lead to substantive change in the DADT policy within a couple of years, once the Pentagon as completed its famous review and a year or two's worth of kabuki theater has played out.

Now a perhaps unexpected voice has been heard in one of the bastions of Beltway insiderdom, The Hill:

Truman fight akin to ‘Don’t ask’ debate

By Clifton Truman Daniel - 05/26/10 07:17 PM ET

This month, my family and I mark the 126th anniversary of the birth of my grandfather, President Harry Truman. We celebrate his life and his many contributions to our nation, but we are particularly proud of his decision to desegregate the U.S. Armed Forces in July 1948.

It wasn’t easy. He faced fierce opposition from inside and outside the military. Many military leaders, including Army Chief of Staff Gen. Omar Bradley, argued that mixing black and white soldiers would destroy the Army. General George Marshall said “experiments within the Army in the solution of social problems are fraught with danger to efficiency, discipline, and morale.” Others said the military should not adopt a policy contrary to the views of a majority of the people. At that time, Gallup polls found that 82 percent of Americans disagreed with my grandfather’s civil rights initiatives.

My grandfather was appalled that African-American service members had been beaten and lynched upon their return from World War II. They had risked their lives to defend our nation, but were denied the full rights of American citizenship. For him, it was an issue of fairness — an issue of human rights. He listened to the arguments made by his senior military advisors, men he respected, who had served this country honorably. But he knew what was right and was determined to get it done.

There are parallels between the opposition to the desegregation of the military and the debate on “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the law that requires the firing of a service member based solely on his or her sexual orientation. Like the opponents of desegregation, supporters of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” argue that allowing openly gay and lesbian service members to serve alongside their heterosexual comrades is a “social experiment” and will endanger discipline and morale.

The majority of Americans, however, support open service. An estimated 66,000 gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and Coast Guardsmen serve honorably alongside heterosexual comrades who, in many cases, already know and do not care. Senior military leaders support ending the ban on open service. Admiral Michel Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a February 2, 2010 Senate hearing that “allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the same hearing that he supports President Obama’s decision to repeal the law. Now, they must decide how to move forward.

All agree this change must be done wisely and in a way that will minimize any adverse impact on our military. In fact, an assessment is already underway at the Pentagon. But the order to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell” must come from Congress and there are questions as to when this should occur.

When agreement exceeds disagreement, there is no reason to delay doing the right thing. When the executive order to end segregation was drafted, my grandfather decided to include the establishment of a presidential committee to implement the order. As he told the members of that committee, “I want the job done and I want it done in a way so that everyone will be happy to cooperate to get it done.”

Congressional action on repeal can — and should — be taken this year. It can and should be respectful of the Pentagon’s timeline and implementation recommendations. This can be accomplished by delaying the effective date of repeal until after the study is concluded, which is expected to be December 1, 2010.

While I have no idea where my grandfather would stand on “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” I would hope he would want his gay great-granddaughter and others like her to have the opportunity to serve the country they love with dignity and integrity. He so appreciated service and sacrifice that ensuring the “equality of treatment and opportunity” for all, regardless of race, could not wait — even in an election year.

Extending equal treatment and opportunity to all in our nation’s service, regardless of sexual orientation, is the right thing to do. I hope the example of my grandfather, President Harry Truman, will help our president, Congress, and our military leaders to act with the same courage and conviction to get the job done this year.

Clifton Truman Daniel is the director of public relations for Harry S Truman College and is President Harry S. Truman’s grandson.

I just want to spotlight a couple of points Daniel makes, about the opposition his grandfather faced in making his historic decision.

First, there's the opposition within the military. In 1948 both the country and the military seem to have been far more unified in their opposition to a racially integrated military than they are today with regard to a sexually nondiscriminatory one.

I'm especially struck by the forcefulness of the opposition of Gens. Omar Bradley and George Marshall, figures of something like reverence in American military history (and in Marshall's case a major figure in American diplomatic history). And yet on the issue of integrating the U.S. military, they were simply wrong -- wrong on principle (there was simply no principled excuse for maintaining segregation) and wrong on the facts (the military did not fall apart as a result of dropping the racial divide).

And then I'm struck by the reminder of the overwhelming public opposition to President Truman's civil rights initiatives. We are clearly much farther along the path of general acceptance of the equal rights of LGBT Americans. As more and more Americans become aware that they actually know LGBT folk, and that they're basically no different from any other kind of folk, in shocking contradiction of the intentionally hateful stereotypes perpetuated by the increasingly desperate forces of bigotry and reaction, it becomes harder for them to think of their LGBT relatives, friends, and coworkers in the framework of the old demonic abstractions.

The fact is, we've been hearing from large numbers of high-ranking American military men that they see no military-preparedness obstacle to jettisoning DADT. Will there be problems with the transition to this newly integrated U.S. military? Of course. Just as there have been problems in incorporating women into the services. But they're problems that can and will be dealt with, for the simplest reason, so well understood by Harry Truman: If we Americans are who and what we think we are, we have no choice.

And the result will be a military that much stronger for taking advantage of the desire to serve and the talents of all its citizens. As soon as the people responsible for setting that transition in motion get their act together.


LESSONS FROM HISTORY:

THE TIMELINE ON DESEGREGATING

Some LGBT colleagues are now circulating a link to a timeline of "Desegretation of the Armed Forces" on the website of the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum, stretching from the September 1945 appointment by Secretary of War Robert Patterson of "a board of three general officers to investigate the Army's policy with respect to African-Americans and to prepare a new policy that would provide for the efficient use of African-Americans in the Army" to the October 1953 announcement by the Army "that 95% of African-American soldiers are serving in integrated units."

This history is fascinating, and valuable for the reminder that such policies are not changed "with the stroke of a pen." However, the implication of those now circulating the link seems to me misleading: that it took eight years to desegregate the military, so why is anyone complaining if it's still going to take us a few more years to change military policy to full acceptance of homosexuals?

But that isn't quite what this history shows me. What I see is a couple of years of bureaucratic paper-shuffling before President Truman decided to take decisive action and issued Executive Order 9981, on July 26, 1948, stating:

"It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."

It took a lot of head-cracking yet to ensure that procedures implementing the goals of Executive 9981 were developed and enacted. Still, according to the history, by the spring of 1950, the policy of racially segregated armed forces was changed. Yes, it did take additional time for the new policy to be fully carried out. The 1951 dates are assorted markers of how the changed policy was shown to be in force.

Those who are claiming that the desegregation of the armed forces was an "eight-year process" are fudging at both ends, 1945-48 and 1951-53. The only date in 1953 is that 95% figure noted above -- a measurement of successful implementation.

As far as I can see, we have a number of high-level government officials saying they will support a change from DADT to, well, something else, at some vague point under some vague condtions sometime in the future. If anything equivalent to Executive Order 9981 making nondiscrimination official U.S. policy and insisting that everyone involved in setting and enforcing policies and procedures to act accordingly.

Maybe by the end of this Pentagon review we'll be closer to an Executive Order 9981 moment, but it seems to me that under the most favorable analysis we're still trapped in the DADT equivalent of that 1945-48 paper-shuffling phase -- with, I might add, no indication that such a moment is in the cards. To put it another way, there's no Harry Truman in sight. All the players seem only too happy to let other players have the fun.

So yes, it's well to remember that desegregation did not happen overnight in 1948. However, I don't take away from history the lesson that all forms of bureaucratic hemming and hawing count toward the goal of changing the policy discriminating against gay people serving in the military.

#