Laura in GA writing in the comments thread on my post comparing Obama's appointment of a gay ambassador to New Zealand in 2009 to Ronald Reagan appointing a black man ambassador to Apartheid-era South Africa in 1986:

It should be noted that Reagan only made the Perkins appointment AFTER Congress embarrassed him over his longstanding refusal to put any real pressure on South Africa's racist regime. His South Africa policy was driven by a bullshit theory called "constructive engagement" that essentially did nothing; Desmond Tutu took him to task over it in an amazing speech at the time ("n my view, the Reagan administration’s support and collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian.")

Reagan vetoed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 that put stricter sanctions on the apartheid regime. Congress stood up to him and overrode it, under the leadership of Ted Kennedy and many others who refused to pretend that the apartheid regime's supposedly "anti-communist" stance was more important than doing what was right. Kennedy went to South Africa in 1985 to expose the injustices there - over the objections of Reagan and of Perkins' predecessor, Herman Nickel. (I believe that Ambassador Nickel openly denounced the trip.)

Point being that, yeah, Reagan's act of appointing Perkins was audacious in a sense, but he didn't do it because he was warmhearted or truly brave. He did it because the political climate of the moment forced him to do so. I suspect that the same would happen with the Obama administration if the pressure were there.

Ben Smith at Politico notes with some alarm—dogs and cats living together!—that the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb offered up a similar suggestion.