The politics behind Obama’s same-sex marriage ‘evolution’
President Barack Obama’s support for same-sex marriage is as shrewd as it is bold, calculated to reinvigorate core supporters and young Democrats while courting Hollywood donors, analysts say.
Mr Obama spent a year “evolving” his opinion before becoming the first US president in history to endorse gay unions on Wednesday, saying: “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
But was it a bold statement on a politically divisive issue or a carefully orchestrated strategy? Both, say UK political analysts.
Get out the vote
“It has been increasingly clear in the last few months President Obama has had to do something to shore up his base. He needs to reinvigorate supporters or they won’t vote, they won’t campaign or they won’t give him money,” said Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism, City University London.
The president’s smooth move risks alienating working class, lunch box folks, however, said Marc Stears, professor of political theory at the University of Oxford, specialising in the politics of radicalism.
Many are the same people Mr Obama annoyed in 2008 when he described them as Americans who “cling to guns or religion or their antipathy toward people who aren’t like them,” during the primary campaign against Hilary Clinton.
“My sense is that it is a bold move,” Professor Stears said of President Obama’s announcement, adding “to win again, Obama needs the support of blue collar voters in some industrial and formerly industrial states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Those voters are generally fairly socially conservative.”
Taking the hit now
“That said, my guess is that Obama would prefer to fight this battle now rather than later in the campaign,” he added. “He wouldn’t want the argument to fester or to build up in the closing weeks. Better to take any hit now rather than wait until things get potentially dangerous.”
Although the US will vote primarily on economic issues on 6 November, same-sex marriage could tip the scales, he said.
The build-up to the president’s televised announcement evolved almost as methodically as his position. Vice President Joe Biden weighed in first with “impromptu” remarks in an interview televised nationally on Sunday, followed up by Tweets from the president’s senior campaign advisor.
Republican contender Mitt Romney then had time to search his conscience on this “very tender and sensitive topic” and early on Wednesday confirmed his view was that “marriage, itself, is a relationship between a man and a woman and that’s my own preference.”
That set the stage for the president’s Wednesday night interview with ABC.
‘Signature moment’
The president noted the years he spent discussing the issue with friends, neighbours, staff in same-sex relationships and even his two daughters. He considered the soldiers fighting on America’s behalf who operate under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, he said and noted his administration no longer supported the federal Defence of Marriage Act, which describes marriage as between a man and a woman.
Then came his “signature moment” as the American networks called it.
“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr Obama told ABC.
Polls may have helped in the president’s evolution. Some 71 per cent of voters ages 18-29, a crucial group for President Obama, said they favoured legalisation of gay marriage in three Gallup polls taken in the last year. The number of states that issue marriage licences to same-sex couples is also on the increase – now including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, New York and the District of Columbia.
Ramping up the rhetoric
UK commentators say so-called “culture politics” have long been more polarising in US elections with lengthy debates over abortion, family values, religion in public life by far right and far left candidates. But Professor Stears said that was a result of the courts rather than an extreme vein running through US culture.
“This kind of issue is one of absolutes in the US because of the role of the judges,” he said. “It is not, in other words, for normal politics to deal with these issues as much as it is for state and federal courts. That tends to make compromise difficult and makes pressure groups feel they have to ramp up their case to make themselves heard.”