In his typically blunt way, he said he didnt care whether a soldier was straight, but whether he could shoot straight As things turned out, Goldwaters support and all my arguments were academicThe House passed a resolution opposing my position by more than three to oneThe Senate opposition was not as great but was still substantialThat meant that if I persisted, the Congress would overturn my position with an amendment to the defense appropriations bill that I couldnt easily veto, and even if I did, the veto would be overridden in both houses While all this was going on, I saw a poll showing that by 48 to 45 percent the public disagreed with my positionThe numbers didnt look too bad for such a controversial issue, but they were, and they showed why Congress thought it was a dead-bang loser for themOnly 16 percent of the electorate strongly approved of lifting the ban, while 33 percent very strongly disapprovedThose were the people whose votes could be influenced by a congressmans positionIts hard to get politicians in swing districts to take a 17 percent deficit on any issue into an electionInterestingly, the biggest divisions were these: self-identified born-again Christians opposed my position 70 to 22 percent, while people who said they knew homo***uals personally approved of it 66 to 33 percent With congressional defeat inevitable, Les Aspin worked with Colin fake hermes Powell and the Joint Chiefs on a compromiseAlmost exactly six months later, on July 19, I went to the National Defense University at Fort McNair to announce it to the officers in attendanceDont ask, dont tell basically said that if you say youre gay, its presumed that you intend to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and you can be removed, unless you can convince your commander youre celibate and therefore not in violation of the codeBut if you dont say youre gay, the following things will not lead to your removal: marching in a gay-rights parade in civilian clothes; hanging out in gay bars or with known homo***uals; being on homo***ual mailing lists; and living with a person of the same *** who is the beneficiary of your life insurance policyOn paper, the military had moved a long way, to live and let live, while holding on to the idea that it couldnt acknowledge gays without approving of homo***uality and compromising morale and cohesionIn practice it often didnt work out that wayMany anti-gay officers simply ignored the new policy and worked even harder to root out homo***uals, costing the military millions of dollars that would have been far better spent making America more secure In the short run, I got the worst of both worldsI lost the fight, and the gay community was highly critical of me for the compromise, simply refusing to acknowledge the consequences chanel bag of having so little support in Congress, and giving me little credit for lifting another ban on gays, the ban against serving in critical national security positions, or for the substantial number of gays and lesbians who were working throughout the administrationBy contrast, Senator Dole won bigBy raising the issue early, and repeatedly, he guaranteed it so much publicity that it appeared I was working on little else, which caused a lot of Americans who had elected me to fix the economy to wonder what on earth I was doing and whether theyd made a mistake I was finding it a challenge to keep another campaign commitment: cutting the White House staff by 25 percentIt was a nightmare for Mack McLarty, especially since we had a more ambitious agenda than the previous administrations and were getting more than twice as much mailOn February 9, just a week before I was slated to announce my economic program, I proposed the 25 percent reduction, cutting the staff by 350 people, down to 1,044 employeesEverybody took a hit; even Hillarys office would be smaller than Barbara Bushs, though she would take on greater responsibilitiesThe reduction I regretted most was the elimination of twenty career positions in the correspondence sectionI would have preferred to reduce their numbers by attrition, but Mack said there was no other way to meet the goalBesides, we had to have some money to rolex fakes modernize the White HouseThe staff couldnt even send and receive e-mail, and the phone system hadnt been changed since the Carter yearsWe couldnt do conference calls, but anyone could press one of the big lighted extension buttons and listen in on someone elses conversation, including mineSoon we had a better system installed We also beefed up one part of the White House staff: the casework operation that was designed to help individual citizens who had personal problems with the federal government, often involving an effort to obtain disability, veterans, or other benefitsUsually citizens call on their Usenators or representatives for help in such matters, but because I had run a highly personalized campaign, many Americans felt they could call on meI got an especially memorable request on February 20, when Peter Jennings, the ABC news anchor, moderated a televised Childrens Town Meeting in the White House, in which young people between the ages of eight and fifteen asked me questionsThe kids asked if I helped Chelsea with her homework, why no women had been elected President, what I would do to help Los Angeles after the riots, how health care would be paid for, and whether I could do anything to stop violence in schoolsA lot of them were interested in the environment But one of the children wanted helpAnastasia Somoza was a beautiful girl from New York City who was rolex replica supplies confined to a wheelchair because of cerebral palsyShe explained that she had a twin sister, Alba, who also had cerebral palsy but who, unlike her, couldnt speakSo because she cant speak, they put her in a special education classBut she uses computers to speakAnd I would like her to be in a regular education class just like meAnastasia said she and her parents were convinced that Alba could do regular schoolwork if given a chanceFederal law required children with disabilities to be educated in the least restrictive environment, but the critical decision about what is least restrictive is made at the childs schoolIt took about a year, but eventually Alba got into a regular class Hillary and I kept in touch with the Somoza family, and in 2002, I spoke at the girls high school graduationThey both went on to college, because Anastasia and her parents were determined to give Alba all the opportunities she deserved, and werent shy about asking others, including me, to helpEvery month, the agency liaison who headed the casework operation sent me a report on the people wed helped, along with a few of the moving thank-you letters they sent In addition to the staff cuts, I announced an executive order to cut administrative expenses 3 percent throughout the government, and a reduction in the salaries of top appointees and in their perks, like limousine service and private dining men's rolex watch roo