Politics of Transition

Health care, gay rights, immigration, and energy were the rallying points on the charted field for political battles in late 2009 and early 2010.

President Barack H. Obama made good on his health-care reform promise, while Republicans likewise made good on less constructive aspirations to delay it—a debate that we commented on with equal parts optimism and skepticism. The House of Representatives 220-215 vote represented a bittersweet victory, moving sweeping health-care legislation forward at the necessary cost of the unjust Stupak Amendment. The national debate reached fever pitch and the bill seemed doomed as it stalled for months in Congress, prompting us to take up a call for legislative reconciliation despite criticism from Republicans who, hypocritically, have historically taken full advantage of the tactic. In the end, reconciliation gave what was perhaps the most sweeping legislation since the Johnson administration a place in the annals of history and U.S. law.

This marked only the beginning in a long series of political debates and snafus that would come to define fall 2009 and spring 2010. The tragic shooting at Fort Hood laid bare the inadequacies of mental-health offerings in the United States military and showed us that terrorism is not the sole province of religion. Similarly, reactions to the threat of terrorism represented not change that we could believe in, but rather the stasis that we feared. We were disappointed by Obama’s renewal of the Patriot Act, a bill whose overwhelming Congressional support was cause for alarm, not comfort, as the legislation remains an infraction against freedom. The bill represented and still represents an unnecessary forfeiture of a Supreme Court-affirmed right to privacy.

Progress on the gay-rights front was more encouraging and elicited our praise. Bigoted animus was shown the legislative door with the inclusion of gays in laws protecting groups from hate crimes. Such legislation will be necessary as long as there is targeted violence—it is a corrective tool that we are glad now protects homosexual individuals.

The Washington, D.C. City Council made bold steps toward institutionalizing gay marriage in October, steps that we encouraged Congress not to override. A similar endeavor was undertaken in Maine with the vote on “Question One” but yielded less success because voters opposed gay marriage. However, the debate itself highlighted a problem in the very understanding of civil unions: Marriage itself is a religious institution that is inappropriately included in public law, and thus all marriages should instead be legally defined as secular “civil unions.” Despite the disappointment in Maine, we saw hope’s silhouette once again with Obama’s reaffirmation of his commitment to gay rights during the State of the Union address, in which he promised to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Preceding Obama’s address, Senator Scott P. Brown’s victory in Massachusetts drew our attention. The win prompted much political punditry and analysis of Massachusetts Attorney General Martha M. Coakley’s gaffes. Instead of focusing on her mistakes, we voiced our conviction that—following Brown’s victory—Democrats must not only deliver results, but also do so in a bipartisan manner.

That spirit of level-headed bipartisanship proved hard to come by as the climate-change and energy debates came to the fore. Obama’s move in April to promote offshore drilling was an unnecessary and unsavory concession whose political benefits do not outweigh the consequences to the environment. It represented not thoughtful compromise, but rather the political strong-arming that yields poor policy.

We reiterated time and time again that the proper way to address the energy and climate-change crises is to explore alternative-energy sources, including nuclear power. Obama’s February decision to commit $8.3 billion to construct new nuclear reactors in Georgia reassured us that the administration understood the technology’s possible benefits. However, we also asserted that nuclear power is not the only potential silver bullet, and the president should keep an open mind about other alternative-energy options.

Political oddities punctuated these national-level debates throughout the academic year. Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize reflected a poor decision on the prize committee’s part, but we recognized the grace and humility with which Obama handled a politically delicate situation. In contrast, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele inappropriately behaved in an outlandish fashion that was an embarrassment to the Republican Party. His involvement in the strip-club funding debacle and indelicate handling of racial issues evinced our argument that the RNC had no one but itself to blame for choosing such an incompetent character to head the party.

As the academic year’s end drew near, some of the gravest transgressions against justice manifested in the national issue of immigration policy. The passage of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 represents the worst of our nation’s approaches to problem solving. Its reliance on specious standards of “reasonable suspicion” that seemed to entail nothing further than “looking” like an illegal immigrant remains unacceptable. More horrifying, perhaps, this bill will negatively affect the nation’s Hispanic and Latin-American communities, who will undoubtedly be the first to suffer from profiling and the last to have a say in it.

The national political landscape has certainly changed over the last 12 months, and much of that change has been for better. Still, reactionary responses to big issues sully the national discourse and subject complex problems to the visceral, not the cerebral. Only by adopting a level-headed, considerate, and thoughtful approach to national policies can we craft the idealized American community that we strive to be.