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CLINTON'S LINCOLNIAN LEGACY

by

Sam Kaplan

Clinton has spent much of his last years in office astride the white house stalking horse in pursuit of the presidential holy grail of a legacy. The media endlessly wonder what history will remember of this man other than a cigar, an intern and a blue dress--an apt title for a Peter Greenway film. In fact, Clinton's legacy, forged in his first presidential campaign of 1992, was made clear in the first week of his presidency and ratified in the final months. It is a Lincolnesque legacy in its bolstering of the human spirit and in its achievement through political sputtering, half-measures and other time-honored techniques of compromise.

Clinton is the first president to advance the cause of gay rights, to court them unabashedly in campaigns, to champion their cause as a people. In the 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton publicly courted their vote and their money. Clinton actively raised funds in the gay community and made no effort to hide the courting of cash.

Then, in the first major initiative of his presidency, Clinton acted to end the ban on gays in the military. It caused him tremendous political pain. He took heat even from his own supporters such as Democratic activist Susan Estrich who wrote at the time "As an issue to launch a new administration, gays in the military is hardly an ideal choice, not because Bill Clinton doesn't hold the moral high ground, but because it is a political hot button of the sort that has been used so effectively against Democrats in the past."

Of course, Clinton ended up backtracking and compromising earning wrath even from some in the pro-gay rights community, for whom he had stuck out his southern-raised neck. But the symbolic and practical importance of a president of the United States going to bat for the rights of gays to serve in the military, for treating them as people with inalienable rights, was the most important thing Clinton would do in his presidency. In part, because of the leadership of President Clinton, the gay and lesbian community is more accepted in America than ever before. During the Clinton presidency we have seen more gay roles in television shows, movies and other pastures of our cultural landscape. Gays hold more political offices in more parts of the country than ever before and there is even an openly gay Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives. Clinton himself has a staff member in the White House whose role is to serve as a liaison to gays and lesbians.

Obviously, much of the credit for this goes to those in the front lines of gay rights activists. But President Clinton's legitimizing of the issue through his office and through his first official act as president, was an invaluable assist. The ground was shifted from the view of this community as a politically perverse liberal backwater to whether they should have the rights that all other Americans enjoy. Just as in the civil rights era, it is an unassailable moral high ground from which time and attrition guarantee victory in this information age.

In one of his final interviews as President, Clinton sat down with the gay newsmagazine The Advocate. It was a fine bookend to his presidency, sitting down to be interviewed in what 8 years ago was considered by most Americans as an outlandish publication. Today, the interview barely caused a stir. In the interview Clinton noted "Growing up I knew people who were gay, even though they didn't talk about it. And then when I started running for president and people who were active in the gay rights cause started to talk to me--I just decided that it was one thing I was going to try to make a difference in."

He did.