(Diarist's note: Satire.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki today defended President Barack Obama from continued criticism from bloggers who have pressed the administration on its plans for coming through on promises Obama made as a candidate in 2008 and again in 2012.
"When the president, then Senator Obama, was running for the presidency, he thought -- we all thought -- he'd have to deal with several really pressing issues," Psaki said. "But as those problems multiplied, some of the issues that were important to the progressive movement, to some of the left-wingers, but not as important to the country, those issues were not seen by the president or his advisers as issues that would be worth expending political capital on."
Pressed by some members of the press corps on Obama's promise in a 2009 letter to a discharged member of the military that he would end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Psaki said only, "I guess we just ran out of time on gay issues. And that's an issue for the next president to work on if she so chooses."
President-elect Barbara Boxer has been open in her support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Many Democratic strategists believe that if Boxer does not try to end the ban on openly gay military personnel and repeal the federal government's Defense of Marriage Act, the LGBT community will completely withdraw its support of Democratic Party candidates.
"We've been burned, plain and simple," said Human Rights Campaign executive director Jayn Holdman. "We voted for Clinton in 1992, and he said he'd fix the problem. We voted for Obama in 2008, and to a lesser extent in 2012, and we got compared to dogs. If DOMA and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' are still around by the mid-term elections, I think the president is going to be even more surprised than this one has been by how serious we are about not supporting politicians who make promises they never even try to keep."
Obama in 2012 faced heavy criticism and questioning for failing to deliver on promises made to the LGBT community. His lack of action on or public attention paid to the issues LGBT Americans was a cause of considerable strain during his 2012 presidential campaign, in which he repeatedly faced questions regarding those campaign promises.
"I understand that these issues are important to a lot of people," he said at a town hall meeting in 2012 in Des Moines, Iowa, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, "and I would hope that those who support extending rights to gays recognize that there are a lot of contentious issues in this country, and sometimes it's a matter of which contentious issue you think is most important to the most Americans. And so not passing ENDA -- not passing the anti-discrimination bill is definitely something I regret, and I've always supported having openly gay soldiers, but again, you know, we have an energy bill to work on, we have the economy going again, test scores are up in our schools, so I think there's a lot of generally good news to look at in terms of my presidency, and I think that's going to shape how the other party approaches these and other issues."
Another first
Obama's inaction on LGBT issues and the refusal of the Republican candidate, Newt Gingrich, to commit to a position on the issue was seen by many political strategists and pundits as the biggest reason for the first openly gay presidential candidate, former Congressman Barney Frank, D-Mass. His vice presidential running mate was Roberta Achtenberg, a former Housing and Urban Development official under President Bill Clinton.
Obama for America sued the Frank campaign because Frank's campaign material included a "NOPE" poster and a "CHAINS" poster, the latter of which was condemned by the White House and the Congressional Black Caucus.
The "NOPE" poster featured a triangle with the symbol for "banned" on it, a reference to the lack of action the Frank campaign believed had been taken on gay issues.
The "CHAINS" poster also featured a triangle, this one chained by the letters D, O, M and A, a reference to the 1997 act that effectively barred same-sex partners of federal employees from being eligible for benefits imparted to heterosexual couples.
The lawsuit prompted the Frank campaign to stop producing the posters, but only after issuing a statement saying the campaign "hoped this has demonstrated how dissatisfied gay Americans are with the president's inaction on marriage, military service and equal rights for all Americans."
Hopes dashed
Many gay activists had hoped that the first gay presidential candidate, along with the dwindling number of Senate Republicans -- 38 in 2010, 37 in 2012 and 33 in 2014 -- would signal to the Democratic Party that the time had come and the country had firmly come around to the idea of extending benefits to gay couples and gay citizens.
But Obama was repeatedly noncommittal on the idea. The White House drew angry responses in February 2013 when Psaki said, "The issue of openly serving in the military is one the White House is committed to studying and resolving based on the suggestions of the commanders in the field, not the politicians in the Congress."
That comment was met with heavy skepticism, however, because a coalition of 50 retired generals and other top brass from the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force had previously sent a report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff supporting ending the ban on openly gay military personnel. At the time, the White House said the report was "an important piece of the process, which is ongoing."
Subsequent testy questions from liberal bloggers resulted in a slow-spoken response from Psaki: "Isn't it pathetic how much of this is actually realistic given the promises Obama made and the zero promises he's shown any tangible sign of making good on?"