Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Wed, 23 Dec 1992 09:42:00 ET
From:         "Ellen.Edgerton" <EBEDGERT@SUADMIN.BITNET>
Subject:      More cabinet appointments

> At a press-conference in Little Rock yesterday someone asked Les Aspin
> if he was going to allow gays to serve in the military. Predictably,
> he avoided the question. I am sure that despite all the emphasis on
> minorities Clinton will not appoint an openly gay person to the cabinet.
> Gays are the only minority that a president can ignore without getting
> into trouble. I think it's disgusting.
>
> Sam.

And so it begins.  When someone comes forward and actually makes a
good-faith, though incomplete, effort to make progress, it is all but
inevitable that the long-discontented groups of people who have been
unfairly denied access to power will be overcome with pent-up rage.
I also thought about gays, and Asians too.  The cabinet does not
look JUST like America, that is true.

Of course, it looks a heck of a lot MORE like America than any other
cabinet has before, but that is not going to placate the blind rage
of the minorities who have been shut out of power for so very long.
You can't really be angry at these people -- they have enough reason
to be angry at the way they have been treated.

It's really a sad situation.  Finally America gets a president who
genuinely does care about women and minorities, and very probably will
make real progress for them, but these groups of people are so ANGRY
because of the divisive policies of the last 30 years, that anything
Clinton does will be a target for extreme criticism like Sam's.

You can't >blame< women and minorities for wanting their piece of the
pie NOW, NOW, NOW; but you also can't blame Clinton for making what is
clearly a good-faith effort to make progress, even in the face of
political realities.

This will be a very difficult time for everyone, especially Clinton,
who has been left with a legacy of 30 years of divisionary tactics
from both liberals and conservatives alike.  >Everyone< is angry.
>Everyone< is feeling left out.  You cannot blame people for feeling
this way.

The only thing that can be done is for Clinton to continue considering
and compromising where need be, and to take the brunt of the anger.
What he will face in the next four years will make the pressures he faced
during the campaign seem like a Sunday School picnic.

This cannot be avoided.

I am not happy with all of Clinton's cabinet choices, but I am extremely
impressed by his composure under fire -- a fire that is really nobody's
fault.  People are so blinded with anger these days that nothing anyone
is able to do will be satisfactory to them.  What is starting to happen
to America now is that we are going to have to start withdrawing cold
turkey from the divisive liberalism and conservatism of the past.  It
is going to be very, very hard.

I wish Bill Clinton luck.  If we do not get through this period of our
history without learning how to steer a middle course, balancing both
fairness and pragmatism, we will just have to go back to the way it
used to be, and live the 1960s and the 1980s all over again, in ever
worsening intensity; and that will be the end of America.

Well, it's up to Clinton now.   If the American people do not see that
special-interest guerrilla tactics, no matter how right their causes
are, will ultimately not help the country, then the responsibility to
steer the nation through a middle course lies squarely on his
shoulders.

I am sorry there are not more women on his Cabinet, and I am sorry
there are no open homosexuals, because I have been thinking about
that discrepancy.  But I am not sorry for the course this nation is
about to try to take.  It's our only way into the next century.

Well, them's my sentiments.   :)


Ellen
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