Cautious Play is Bad Strategy
Today's headlines on stories that interest me brings a curious convergence between 1) health-care reform and 2) marriage equality. Advocates of both have for far too long played a strategy of holding back and not moving as quickly, boldly, and energetically as they can until they feel that "the votes are there". Alas, the votes will not be there without the commitment and the push that attracts them.
On health-care reform: Obama, seen as the bold, audacious candidate, ran on an idea of implementing universal health care. We elected him both for the idea and for the bold, uncompromising stance. And now, time drags on, the "debate" has dipped into Hitlerisms, and Obama has lost the confidence of an energized electorate by looking for bipartisan compromises and "workable" solutions — rather than plowing ahead and doing what's right to do.
Now is his chance to return to the bold vision. Having offered even to throw out any sort of "public option", it's time to seize the moment, throw out everything that congress thinks might have been negotiated or settled, wipe that slate clean, and make the bold call for a simple, straightforward, no-euphemisms universal, single-payer health-care plan for America.
It would take guts and vision, but the outcome and rewards would be startling, and it's clear that this is the time to move, right now, on such a tactic.
Also today is the story about Ted Olson and David Boies' lawering for the Perry v. Schwarzenegger lawsuit challenging the constitutional validity of Proposition 8. What was settled today was that several LGBT advocacy groups that had petitioned U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to intervene in the case were denied. (Some background.) This makes those groups, who see themselves as the standard bearers in the fight for LGBT equality, unhappy.
I'm only mildly surprised to report that it doesn't make me unhappy and that I see it as a well-earned comeuppance.
These are the same groups who have spent years trying to conserve their assets, reserve their energies, get behind a single strategy that they thought would move LGBT rights forward in this country. They have been singularly ineffective in doing that, at the same time that they have been very good at wasting money and time. None of them have been behind any initiative that saw breakthroughs in LGBT equality.
As many of us remember vividly, these were also the same groups who denounced the move Olson and Boies were making by filing the lawsuit. The time was not right! A bad result could only set us back! The votes aren't there yet!
"Honey," we said, "those votes ain't never gonna be there!"
A bold vision creates its own path.
At the time Olson and Boies went ahead, pushing aside those milquetoast concerns with a bold, forge-ahead, the-time-is-always-right-for-civil-rights approach. Months later, after the writing on the wall had been carved in stone, those groups petitioned to intervene so that their "expertise" could be available. Happily, today, they were excluded from this particular effort, a move that I think will only strengthen this case.
On the LGBT-equality front, a single, coordinate national strategy for achieving, say, marriage equality is as deadly as letting farmers grow only one variety of corn. The best strategy is multiple strategies carried forward by as many different groups of people with as many different groups of ideas as we can manage.
Right now the anti-proposition 8 effort in California is stymied by the question of whether to move for a new referendum in 2010 or 2012. The predictable question: when will the votes be there?
That's entirely the wrong question, for equality or for real health-care reform. The answer, however, seems likely to be that it's always the right time to do the right thing.