By ROSS DOUTHAT
5:47 p.m. | Update Visit my blog for an update to this column written after President Obama’s statements about same-sex marriage today.
In the latest Gallup poll, 50 percent of Americans support redefining marriage to include same-sex couples – which is more than the percentage of Americans that supported the Affordable Care Act, think favorably of the controversial 2009 stimulus package, or approve of Barack Obama’s job performance in general. Among independent voters, meanwhile, support for same-sex marriage is up to 57 percent, meaning that more independents support same-sex marriage today than voted for Obama during his easy victory in 2008.
Given these numbers, it seems a little strange that the president is so unwilling to acknowledge what every non-delusional Washington observer believes to be the case – that like his voluble vice-president, he is part of the emerging pro-same-sex-marriage majority, rather than the opponent that he still officially pretends to be. Why does a president who declined to defend the Defense of Marriage Act persist in the ridiculous pretense of an “evolving” position, one might reasonably ask (an evolution that will be complete, one assumes, the day he wins re-election), when same-sex marriage might actually be a political winner, and his wink-and-a-nod approach to the issue looks so transparently calculated?
Journalists looking for an answer to this question have largely focused on the possibility that a presidential shift on same-sex marriage might depress Democratic turnout among blacks and Hispanics, two crucial constituencies in which support for same-sex unions is lower than in the country as a whole.
But there are two deeper reasons why the president might be leery of being honest about what we can reasonably assume are his actual convictions on the issue.
Doug Mills/The New York TimesVice President Joe Biden caused a stir over his support for gay marriage.
The
first reason is that while the increase in public support for same-sex
marriage over the last two decades has been astonishingly swift, it has
not been irreversible. Instead, sudden bursts of legal momentum – mostly
driven by judicial rulings, from Massachusetts to Iowa – have often
prompted temporary backlashes. In Gallup’s polling, support for same-sex
marriage rose from 35 percent to 42 percent between 1999 and 2004, but
then dropped back to 37 percent; it rose to 46 percent just before
Obama’s 2008 victory, but then dropped back to 40 percent a year later.
Today’s 50 percent support likewise represents a slight drop-off from
the high of 53 percent in the survey Gallup conducted last year.
This pattern suggests that Americans grow more resistant to same-sex marriage the more they feel that it’s being imposed upon them by an unelected judicial elite, and grow more supportive the more it seems to be gaining ground organically. A president is not an unelected judge, but a public flip-flop on the issue by the nation’s chief executive might feel like yet another elite attempt to pre-empt a debate that appears to be moving toward a resolution, but hasn’t quite been settled yet.
The second reason for the White House’s caution is that opinion polling has consistently understated opposition to same-sex marriage since the issue rose to national prominence. Voters who say they support it when Gallup and other pollsters come calling can behave very differently in the privacy of the voting booth.
In a 2010 paper, for instance, the New York University political scientist Patrick J. Egan compared polling in advance of state same-sex marriage referendums to the actual results, and found that
But to say that the president’s approach is understandable does not mean that it’s necessarily defensible. Supporters of same-sex marriage have worked very hard to frame their issue, not as an ordinary political conflict, but as an all-or-nothing question that pits enlightenment and progress against reaction, bigotry and hate. I don’t accept that framing, but I accept that its architects genuinely believe in it, and see the conflict over same-sex unions as a clear-cut struggle between good and evil, with no possibility of middle ground.
If same-sex marriage isn’t an issue where people can disagree in good faith, though, then the president’s evasions and obfuscations can’t be treated as ordinary political maneuverings, and excused as just so much politics-as-usual. If the debate is as black and white as many supporters of same-sex marriage argue, then they should be much harder on political leaders who pretend that it’s a gray area.
Indeed, if you accept the framing of the debate that many liberals (and many journalists) embrace, then you have to acknowledge that President Obama has spent the last four years lying to the American people about his convictions on one of the defining civil rights issues of our time, and giving aid and comfort to pure bigotry in the service of his other political priorities.
This is a harsh indictment, but it’s one that follows inexorably from premises that many of the president’s own supporters have wholeheartedly embraced. If they hold true to these premises — and the press holds true to its obligations — then the kind of uncomfortable questions the White House spent this week dodging will be asked again and again of the president over the course of the campaign to come.
In the latest Gallup poll, 50 percent of Americans support redefining marriage to include same-sex couples – which is more than the percentage of Americans that supported the Affordable Care Act, think favorably of the controversial 2009 stimulus package, or approve of Barack Obama’s job performance in general. Among independent voters, meanwhile, support for same-sex marriage is up to 57 percent, meaning that more independents support same-sex marriage today than voted for Obama during his easy victory in 2008.
Given these numbers, it seems a little strange that the president is so unwilling to acknowledge what every non-delusional Washington observer believes to be the case – that like his voluble vice-president, he is part of the emerging pro-same-sex-marriage majority, rather than the opponent that he still officially pretends to be. Why does a president who declined to defend the Defense of Marriage Act persist in the ridiculous pretense of an “evolving” position, one might reasonably ask (an evolution that will be complete, one assumes, the day he wins re-election), when same-sex marriage might actually be a political winner, and his wink-and-a-nod approach to the issue looks so transparently calculated?
Journalists looking for an answer to this question have largely focused on the possibility that a presidential shift on same-sex marriage might depress Democratic turnout among blacks and Hispanics, two crucial constituencies in which support for same-sex unions is lower than in the country as a whole.
But there are two deeper reasons why the president might be leery of being honest about what we can reasonably assume are his actual convictions on the issue.
Doug Mills/The New York TimesVice President Joe Biden caused a stir over his support for gay marriage.This pattern suggests that Americans grow more resistant to same-sex marriage the more they feel that it’s being imposed upon them by an unelected judicial elite, and grow more supportive the more it seems to be gaining ground organically. A president is not an unelected judge, but a public flip-flop on the issue by the nation’s chief executive might feel like yet another elite attempt to pre-empt a debate that appears to be moving toward a resolution, but hasn’t quite been settled yet.
The second reason for the White House’s caution is that opinion polling has consistently understated opposition to same-sex marriage since the issue rose to national prominence. Voters who say they support it when Gallup and other pollsters come calling can behave very differently in the privacy of the voting booth.
In a 2010 paper, for instance, the New York University political scientist Patrick J. Egan compared polling in advance of state same-sex marriage referendums to the actual results, and found that
the share of voters in pre-election surveys saying that they will vote to ban same-sex marriage is typically seven percentage points lower than the actual vote on election day.That seven-point gap between appearances and reality may help explain why same-sex marriage supporters lost referendums they expected to win in liberal states like Maine and California. And it explains why a savvy White House might take polls suggesting that the issue is a political winner with a very large helping of salt.
But to say that the president’s approach is understandable does not mean that it’s necessarily defensible. Supporters of same-sex marriage have worked very hard to frame their issue, not as an ordinary political conflict, but as an all-or-nothing question that pits enlightenment and progress against reaction, bigotry and hate. I don’t accept that framing, but I accept that its architects genuinely believe in it, and see the conflict over same-sex unions as a clear-cut struggle between good and evil, with no possibility of middle ground.
If same-sex marriage isn’t an issue where people can disagree in good faith, though, then the president’s evasions and obfuscations can’t be treated as ordinary political maneuverings, and excused as just so much politics-as-usual. If the debate is as black and white as many supporters of same-sex marriage argue, then they should be much harder on political leaders who pretend that it’s a gray area.
Indeed, if you accept the framing of the debate that many liberals (and many journalists) embrace, then you have to acknowledge that President Obama has spent the last four years lying to the American people about his convictions on one of the defining civil rights issues of our time, and giving aid and comfort to pure bigotry in the service of his other political priorities.
This is a harsh indictment, but it’s one that follows inexorably from premises that many of the president’s own supporters have wholeheartedly embraced. If they hold true to these premises — and the press holds true to its obligations — then the kind of uncomfortable questions the White House spent this week dodging will be asked again and again of the president over the course of the campaign to come.
