Clinton opposed same-sex marriage during his presidency, and in 1996, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which limited federal recognition of marriage to one man and one woman. In May of this year, Clinton told a crowd at Toronto’s Convention Centre that his position on same-sex marriage was “evolving.”

Apparently, Clinton’s thinking has now further evolved. Asked if he would commit his support for same-sex marriage, Clinton responded, “I’m basically in support.”

Not really that huge of a surprise. Bill Clinton — like most presidents — is deeply concerned about his legacy and here’s a chance to come down on the right side of history. And, of course, since he is out of office there’s no real opportunity for a political backlash.

With that said, unless Barack Obama’s rather incoherent position on marriage also “evolves”, I think Obama will be the last Democratic president in opposition to gay marriage. When future presidential primary candidates have to face off in debates in front of the Democratic base they are going to be met with boos and jeers from the audience if they recite the “marriage is between a man and a woman” meme.

Mental lightweight Sotomayor should be withdrawing from consideration as a Supreme Court nominee any minute now. Any minute…

I’d like to take this in a different direction and use the above spot to note that advertisements rebutting your opponents’ smears is incredibly underused. That’s not to say it’s always smart — in many cases you don’t want to highlight and repeat a smear against your candidate, especially considering how many casual commercial viewers would presumably just catch the smear and ignore the surrounding content. This is a concept that television writer Alex Epstein recently explored on his screenwriting blog, by suggesting that people don’t remember “not” very well. Epstein suggests that when people hear Barack Obama is not a Muslim or Richard Nixon is not a crook, they deduce it to Obama is a Muslim and Richard Nixon is a crook.

So, yeah it is dangerous territory, but campaigns always push back against false or damaging attacks and there isn’t any persuasive reason to believe that campaigns can’t effectively push back in commercial form. A personal anecdote: I worked on a political campaign where our very honorable candidate had his patriotism smeared in our opponent’s frequently-aired commercial. Our campaign reluctantly decided that it was better to leave the ad unanswered on the airwaves and never ran a counter-commercial. This may have ultimately been a smart play, but it’s worth considering what would have happened if we had launched a commercial proclaiming that Scuzzy Opponent is launching so-and-so attacks, then blasted Scuzzy Opponent for voting against increasing benefits to military families. Or something — you get the idea.

Perhaps with Sen. Franken’s victory we’ll see more candidates undertake this type of strategy in 2010 and future elections.

It’s hard to watch such a strange and jumbled performance and not immediately latch onto the fact that Palin is a presumed frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination, not because of any gift of her own, but solely because of the lack of diversity of the modern GOP. When McCain tried to capitalize on a feminist backlash against the media’s (and allegedly Obama’s) sexist coverage of Hillary Clinton, there really wasn’t anyone else to choose. Maine’s two female Senators are the party’s liberal most spokespeople and even Texas heavyweight Kay Bailey Hutchinson is pro-choice. So they were left with Palin, a politician who is impressively unimpressive.

And the only real explanation for Palin calling it quits in the way she called it quits is she is indeed set on running for president. She may be taking the advice of some brilliant strategists, but on the surface it really makes little sense. Palin isn’t Mike Huckabee in 2008 — a little known former governor whose hope of winning the nomination involved camping out in Iowa for years. She’s a former Vice Presidential candidate with 100-percent name recognition, but not a former Vice Presidential candidate like John Edwards in 2008 who also needed to camp out in Iowa for years to challenge the big dogs like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. For better or for worse (okay, for worse) Palin is the Obama and Clinton of the GOP. She’s the star of the party! She could have stayed in Alaska until the end of her term, quietly mastering policy, raising money, and still generated good will by sweeping in to the lower 48 states every month or so for a fundraiser for lesser Republican politicians.

But clearly that isn’t the course she is taking. It looks like we are going to get the same old Sarah Palin. You know, the woman who can’t name a single newspaper she reads, who didn’t know the Africa was a continent, who, with her lavish spending sprees on campaign donor dollars and feuds with late-night talk hosts, seems to better belong in the celebrity gossip rags than in the Washington Post. It’s almost like she enjoys being a laughing stock! I hope that somewhere an SNL exec is on the phone with Tina Fey’s agent.

• Several people who had worked closely with Palin told VF they believed the governor suffered from a “narcissistic personality disorder.”  One example? When her most recent son was born, Palin wrote a letter to friends and family in the voice of God and signed it “Trig’s Creator, Your Heavenly Father.”
• When Obama was notified that McCain had selected Palin as his runningmate, he told aides that it took him four months of preparation to become a national candidate and no matter how bright Palin was, there wasn’t a possibility she would be ready.
• Those who religiously follow politics may be interested to know that McCain strategist Mark McKinnon, who had vowed to not work against Barack Obama and rather publicly resigned after Obama won the nomination, secretly crept back onto the campaign trail to advise Palin — presumably while she questioned Obama’s patriotism and accused him of “palling around with terrorists.”

Again, I don’t really know the answer. But it is worth pointing out that the stars were really aligned here: Nancy Pelosi made a huge push for this bill and Obama and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel lit up House Members’ phone lines. While Neil Sinhababu wonders if the congress might be better off without Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, I think it’s important to note that Peterson bucked strong constituent pressures and reached a compromise with bill-author Henry Waxman — providing conservative members of the Ag Committee sufficient cover to vote for the bill. Al Gore may have also, fittingly, been a key to passage. Though Gore opted against a public push for the Act, I have it on very good word that Gore was on the phones with some last-minute undecideds. While appearing publicly with Gore may have been out of the question, it seems that getting a call from a former Vice-President urging you to vote for his pet issue is actually pretty effective, because Gore managed to change some minds and personally get some more conservative Democrats to vote the right way.

I guess the point of this all is to show how much work went into getting a bare majority of the House to vote for climate change legislation. There is no guarantee that the Senate will do the same and for global warming to be adequately addressed we really need something much stronger from both the House and Senate. Should future elections shift the congress even slightly to the right, then the planet burns. The only way to imagine getting a much better bill in the near future is if Obama decides to really use the bully pulpit and make the case directly to American people that the planet is in peril and we need to act now. But like health care, he seems unwilling to make this case and instead irresponsibly opposes important provisions in the bill. It’s hard to feel great about a first step when the second step seems improbable and the third step seems impossible. But I guess there are more important things to worry about, like, what’s gonna happen with Michael Jackson’s kids?

Rep. Michele Bachmann

From TPM, Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann continues her anti-Census tirade:

“Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps,” said Bachmann. “I’m not saying that that’s what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps.”

Great use of the “I’m not saying” almost analogy. And to be clear, Michele Bachmann did not say that Barack Obama is going to round up Japanese people and put them in camps. Just like I am not saying that Michele Bachmann is a certifiably crazy gasoline-sniffing nutjob with an IQ in the range of Minnesota’s winter temperatures. However, I will break my silence on Bachmann to say that if she isn’t the worst member of congress she’s close.

But corporate copyright holders are powerful and have lots of money that they share with congresspeople who also like power and lots of money. That’s why every time Mickey Mouse’s copyright is about to expire, congress seems to pump out a new, stricter sets of laws and, whadya know, Disney still owns the rights to Mickey. While congress changing its mind isn’t very likely, it is always important to note that current copyright laws are pretty contrary to the founding fathers’ wishes. From Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution the founders write:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The Commerce Clause, at least in its current application, would certainly give congress jurisdiction to pass intellectual property laws, so Constitutional objections probably are a waste of time. Still, the founders were right and current copyright enthusiasts are wrong. Our current intellectual property laws are misguided and this should be repeated again and again.

I’m for increased funding in rail, and I’m for rail safety. I also consider the Washington D.C. Red Line Metro collision to be a plain tragedy but I don’t have an opinion on what kind of tragedy it is because it’s still unclear what caused the crash. With that in mind I think it’s a bit rash and I daresay disrespectful for Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) to quickly write a letter calling for more public transportation funding.

Not me though. In Rahm Emanuel’s words, “never let a crisis go to waste.” Transportation funding is important and if using train crashes as a tool to push for that important funding brings the money in, I don’t have a big problem with that.

For now, the White House should have as little to do as possible with the various legislative products. Let the committees absorb the blows of the bad weeks. Let the early coalitions present themselves. Let the Republicans show their strategy in the mark-up sessions. Let the CBO score all the different options. Let the legislature familiarize itself with different revenue options. Wait. Wait and wait and wait. Wait until Congress has pushed this as far upfield as it’s able.

Then open up the White House. Then have Obama on TV. Then have Rahm on the phone with legislators. Then take Olympia Snowe for a ride on Marine One. The White House can exert explosive force on a piece of legislation, but it can only do so effectively for a short period of time. That was the mistake Clinton White House made in 1994. By the time their legislation was near reality, administration officials were so deeply involved that they couldn’t add external momentum. It is not a mistake that Rahm Emmanuel, who watched it all happen firsthand, means to repeat.

That’s a reasonable argument, but I’m not entirely convinced. Though the mistakes of 1994 aren’t being repeated, I worry that the administration may be so jittery about Clinton’s failure at reform that they are making the inverse of Clinton’s errors. Whereas Clinton tried to push a very specific package and froze out many Democrats and the entire Republican caucus, I fear Obama will leave all specifics to congress and yield too much to an obstinate and deeply unpopular Republican caucus. And if the legislature comes to a consensus for a weak and toothless health care package, it may not matter how hard Obama drums support for deeper reforms. Once enough Senators come out on the record against a public plan, it will be an excruciatingly difficult task to force them to back down. And that’s a very real possibility.

This isn’t to say that the administration shouldn’t save a trump card or two for the end, but it would be reassuring if the White House was doing and saying more now.