DEFINING COURAGE DOWN

The Romney campaign is furiously trying to spoon-feed stories to the media that signal a pivot to the center. Yesterday, Molly Ball of The Atlantic did the campaign's a favor and wrote a Romney press release:

Mitt Romney's Gay Spokesman: A Milestone in Republican Politics

The recent hiring of Richard Grenell, Mitt Romney's openly gay foreign-policy spokesman, represents a breakthrough in the world of Republican presidential campaigns.

Grenell isn't the first out gay person to serve as a high-level staffer to a GOP nominee, but as far as I can tell, he is the first such press spokesman -- the first to serve as the public face of the all-but-certain Republican nominee -- and on the historically sensitive issue of national security, no less.... His rise signals a remarkable new openness in a party often castigated for its social conservatism....

We're supposed to be impressed by this? In 2012? I just want to remind Ball that this makes the Romney approximately as pro-gay as the Poppy Bush White House twenty years ago. Ball talks about "the historically sensitive issue of national security," but Grennell is a spokesman on defense issues for a guy who's not in office; Bush Senior had a man known to be gay as his spokesman at the Pentagon.

Older readers know who I mean -- Pete Williams, now a newsman at NBC, was Pentagon spokesman during the Gulf War, then was outed in August 1991. There was talk of a resignation, but the Bush administration kept him on, and he continued to serve as the controversy died down.

Hiring Grennell is a huge breakthrough? Why?