The Open Society and Its President

^{Related: Barack Obama's Legislative Agenda}

The results of last Tuesday's election still haven't sunk in for me. When anti-gay propositions passed in Arizona, Arkansas, California, and Florida, I was immediately disappointed. Disappointment is an emotion I'm used to on election night, especially after two terms of George W. Bush.

But when Barack Obama won the presidency, my brain couldn't quite process it. A professor overseas wrote me asking what my reaction was, and it took me several days to answer that question. The magnitude of this is extremely significant; I'm beginning to understand what it must have felt like to be a conservative in 1980. The last Democrat who wasn't a Southern Baptist governor who rose to power partly on Dixiecrat support was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, who was also (not coincidentally, I suspect) the last Democrat to get a majority of the popular vote. We can't dismiss the importance of the fact that Obama is a black man, either. But more important than all of that, to me, is what his election will do for national policy.

Let's imagine for a moment that Justice John Paul Stevens announced tomorrow that this will be his last Supreme Court session. Under President George W. Bush, every major civil rights or civil liberties decision of the past 50 years would be in some kind of danger because the addition of one more conservative justice could create a 5-4 right-wing judicial activism bloc. But under President Barack Obama, the retirement of Justice Stevens will almost certainly mean the appointment of a justice who shares his commitment to basic civil rights precedents.

Or we can look at the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would protect LGBT employees from being fired or demoted as a result of coming out. When the bill came up last year, I actually suggested that it be split in two--one ENDA for sexual orientation, another for gender identity--so that Bush wouldn't veto the whole thing over the gender identity clause. But Obama is committed to a trans-inclusive ENDA, so that's no longer an issue.

We can look at immigration reform, though this is an issue that's affected more by Democratic gains in Congress than by the election of a new president. Still, we can be reasonably certain that draconian bills like 2006's H.R. 4437 are completely off the table for at least four years--and that any immigration proposals passed in the interim will include a path to citizenship.

The "global gag rule," blocking U.S.-funded international access to any health care organizations that are pro-choice (regardless of whether they actually perform abortions), will be gone. "Don't ask, don't tell," which weakens the U.S. armed forces by depriving it of tens of thousands of qualified personnel who happen to be gay or lesbian, will be gone. The increasingly censorious FCC will more than likely be reined in by the appointment of new committee members. The Pentagon will likely stop infiltrating pacifist groups and other organizations deemed unpatriotic.

However one might feel about the rest of the Obama agenda, the civil liberties climate in the United States is about to improve. That's good news for anyone who values their personal freedom, or the constitutional protections that guarantee it.