Last Sunday, the Vice President gave a clear, carefully worded, and obviously well thought-out statement of personal support for same-gender marriage. Mediaworld exploded; Axelrod issued a suspiciously prompt "clarification". On Monday, the Secretary of Education, in response to a question, stated his personal support for same-gender marriage and, once again, Mediaworld exploded. Do these folks (Mediaworld) really have nothing better to do? Are there no more pressing issues involved in the election campaign? This looks to me like trying to find a fight where there isn't one.
While Vice Presidents (and particularly this one) can and occasionally do take to adlibbing and get off-message and while Cabinet officers sometimes state their personal opinions when maybe they should have toed the Administration's line, I don't think that was the case here. This is a very sensitive issue, due in no small part to the fact that the President has hedged. It strikes me as being slightly less likely that either of these gentlemen would have failed to vet their responses with the White House beforehand than that they would have issued a unilateral declaration of war against somebody or other without first at least Emailing the National Security Adviser. These comments were planned; they were carefully scripted, and they leave the Administration where the Administration wants to be for now - unofficially in support of same-gender marriage, but officially neutral. It's frustrating to those of us who have supported same-gender marriage for years, but there it is.
This is, let's face it, a state issue. It isn't clear to me that the Federal government has the right under the Constitution to make same-gender marriage legal in all fifty states by executive order or by signing a bill passed by both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court has the right and well may find that discrimination against same-gender couples seeking marriage licenses violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It may also find that some, if not all, of the loathsome and misnamed "defense" of marriage act fails to pass Constitutional muster. But the Court is not likely to take notice of the Administration's views and a full and forthright Presidential declaration of support isn't likely to accomplish much, so why make it? I suspect that the on-going evolution of the President's views will reach its conclusion sometime after next January and I suspect that those views will evolve to about where the Vice President's were last Sunday. But I don't see any point in setting our hair on fire about it in the meantime. And as for the chattering classes, well, they certainly do like to chatter, don't they?
Meanwhile, we've got an election to win.