Our friend Ari Melber over at MSNBC does a great commentary on why the President's marriage equality decision being motivated by politics is okay.
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Here's the unofficial transcript:
A lot of people are saying that President Obama endorsed gay marriage last week for political reasons. Like that’s a bad thing.
But if Obama’s shift on gay rights was just a craven political move for election year politics – I think that would be great news for the country.
Let me explain why -- but first let’s look at the numbers and the context.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that 67 percent of people surveyed thought Obama changed his position mostly for political reasons.
And the political class has obsessed over that same question. Was Obama really moved by his daughters? His gay friends? His faith?
Of course, the President invited this kind of discussion by emphasizing his personal evolution.
But I think focusing on politicians’ personal feelings really misses the point here. Republicans Dick Cheney and Ken Mehlman have famously reversed their opposition to marriage equality. So did the President who literally signed the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act into law -- Bill Clinton. This year, he was busy campaigning *against* Amendment One in North Carolina.
In both parties, politicans are able to take these positions because public opinion has changed. This graph says it all.
Opposition fell from about 70 percent in 1996, when Clinton signed that marriage law, to almost 40 percent today.
This is not about Obama. It’s about us.
The nation is increasingly open to marriage equality because we have been listening and learning – from our friends, from pop culture and from the strides made by the gay rights community.
I don’t think history will remember the President’s announcement for his personal narrative. The breakthrough here is that the country was ready for an incumbent president to put marriage equality in the center of a major political party. In fact, a position that *none* of the Demcratic president candidates held last cycle will now be in the party platform.
In American politics, we have this mythology about courageous politicans who do the right thing against their political interest.
But isn’t it even more encouraging when doing the right thing has just become good politics?
