Obama Won't Make the Same Mistake Clinton Did...at Least for Awhile

Here's another campaign promise to the left that's going to go unfulfilled, at least for awhile:

President-elect Barack Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military's decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say.

Repealing the ban was an Obama campaign promise. However, Mr. Obama first wants to confer with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his new political appointees at the Pentagon to reach a consensus and then present legislation to Congress, the advisers said.

"I think 2009 is about foundation building and reaching consensus," said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. The group supports military personnel targeted under the ban.

Mr. Sarvis told The Washington Times that he has held "informal discussions" with the Obama transition team on how the new president should proceed on the potentially explosive issue.

Lawrence Korb, an analyst at the Center for American Progress and an adviser to the Obama campaign, said the new administration should set up a Pentagon committee to make recommendations to Congress on a host of manpower issues, including the gay ban.

"If it's part of a larger package, it has a better chance of getting passed," he said.

You may recall that one of the first things Bill Clinton did upon taking office in 1993 was to enact "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" through executive order, which immediately got his administration off to a rocky start. Obama's decision to eliminate that policy would remove any restriction to homosexual membership in the military, and with all the more serious problems going on right now, might seem to be a pretty frivolous move. It would also show a disregard for the wishes of the people who actually have to run our military and have to worry about little things like unit cohesion.

Obama doesn't have to get this policy passed by Congress - he could just do as Clinton did and change the policy by executive order, but what this story tells me is he doesn't have the stomach for making a change like that on his own, despite what he promised the activists during the campaign.

The Center for American Progress is run by John Podesta, a former Clinton aid and now an aid to Obama, and Podesta remembers what happened when Clinton made his move on this issue. Podesta doesn't want to repeat the mistake of making this a hig priority issue for the new president.

Obama's policy will apparently be "don't ask, don't tell, and don't expect me to keep my promises to the lefties anytime soon".