Gay marriage, Obama and the fierce urgency of now: Why did he do it this week?

Gay marriage, Obama and the fierce urgency of now: Why did he do it this week?

Even now, during the closing months of his first term, Barack Obama remains a curiously elusive political leader. That is why the abrupt conclusion to his evolution on gay marriage, announced Wednesday in an interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, is one of the most fascinating moments in his presidency. Glib theories about Obama’s often-cautious approach to the presidency, especially in an election year, have to be revamped in light of his sudden endorsement of gay marriage.
There is a temptation to view the turnabout solely in electoral terms. Obama himself said that the politics of same-sex marriage “may hurt me.” But perhaps the president made the calculation that he was willing to risk the loss of a fraction of socially conservative swing voters in states like Ohio in order to guarantee the enthusiasm of his top fundraisers. (A Washington Post analysis found that almost 20 percent of Obama’s bundlers have publicly revealed that they are gay). Maybe there is even private Obama polling indicating that November turnout among voters in the millennial generation is apt to be higher if the president took a firm position on gay marriage.

Such political narrowcasting misses an essential truth about Obama: his pride and his fear of embarrassment. Joe Biden, by offering an emotional response to the gay-marriage question Sunday on “Meet the Press,” left Obama looking like the Cowardly Lion unable to find his heart until after the election. For Obama to keep mulling the issue as if he were taking a private course in Talmudic Studies would make the president seem faintly ridiculous.

[Related: Join the debate about gay marriage]
Even if the gay-marriage issue was seen as a dangerous distraction by Obama’s reelection campaign, all the president’s handlers could not wish it away. Whether it was the awkward necessity of writing evasive language for the gay marriage plank in the Democratic platform or seeing his campaign surrogates constantly grilled on the question, Obama undoubtedly knew that his room for maneuver was constrained. So the president, after 72 hours of reflection, did the right thing.

Both as an African American and as the nation’s first president who grew up after the climactic days of the civil-rights movement, Obama undoubtedly has wondered how he would have reacted if he had found himself on the frontlines of that transcendent moral issue. Obviously, no one is opposing gay marriages with dogs, fire hoses and billy clubs. But this issue is the closest proxy that 21st-century America has to offer to the which-side-are-you-on struggles of the 1960s. In moral terms, it is quite possible that Obama could not personally endure further equivocation.

In making his decision to walk down the aisle with gay marriage, Obama underscored his awareness that poll-tested politics can only carry you so far in the Oval Office, even in an election year. During Saturday’s campaign kick-off rally in Columbus, Ohio, Michelle Obama told the crowd that the problems that reach the president’s desk “are the ones with no clear solutions--the judgment calls where the stakes are so high and there is no margin for error.” The first lady may have been alluding to the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, but the same principle could be extended to the president’s decision about his public support for gay marriage. In November 2003, the highest court in Massachusetts ruled that gay marriage was legal based on the state constitution. The Massachusetts governor at the time--who by a weird twist of fate was Mitt Romney--vehemently opposed the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s struggle to defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 election was complicated by the liberal high court decision in his home state, even though he distanced himself from the ruling.During the 2004 campaign, it would have seemed ludicrous and embarrassingly naive to imagine that a future president--especially one facing a difficult reelection campaign--would endorse gay marriage. Maybe in 2028, but certainly not in 2012. But such is the engine of social change, slowly chugging up the hill with I-think-I-can determination and then dramatically accelerating once it is over the crest. With an unequivocal statement by Obama on Wednesday, gay marriage suddenly became codified as--at minimum--a bedrock principle of the Democratic Party.

When political handicappers rattle off the hard-to-predict variables that will shape the election and the challenges of the presidency in 2013, they invariably point to the economy and global threats such as the Iranian nuclear program. But such armchair attempts at prophecy are often too cautious and the horizon too limited. Sometimes, it is as simple as a president confronted with a moral choice--and his awareness that the time for temporizing and hand wringing is over.

For Teen With Eosinophils of the Esophagus, Food Is Forbidden

For Teen With Eosinophils of the Esophagus, Food Is Forbidden

Samantha Pecoraro can't enjoy the pizza and chocolate other teens crave. In fact, she can't eat any food except plain potatoes and is fed elemental formula through a gastrointestinal tube.
"I am on the strictest forms of treatment," the Florida 15-year-old tells the world in a YouTube video. "All my food has been taken away. I only want to be a kid."
Sam has eosinophils of the esophagus (EoE), an autoimmune disease that causes her white blood cells to attack food as it passes down the digestive tract. Eosinophils are implicated in numerous inflammatory processes, especially allergic disorders. It is a chronic condition with no known cure.
"I miss Mac and cheese and chicken fingers and salads and artichokes and broccoli," she told ABCNews.com.

U.S. was set for war with Iraq before his U.N. speech

U.S. was set for war with Iraq before his U.N. speech

U.S. was set for war with Iraq before his U.N. speech, The George W. Bush Administration was set on going to war with Iraq even before Colin Powell made his infamous 2003 weapons of mass destruction pitch to the United Nations, writes the former secretary of state in his new book, "It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership."
Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
It might be Powell's biggest revelation in the book, which details the experiences and lessons learned during his career as a soldier, a four-star general and secretary of state.Powell writes in one chapter in which he discussed his address to the U.N. that war "was approaching," reports the Huffington Post, which obtained an advanced copy of the book slated for a May 22 release.
"By then, the President did not think war could be avoided," Powell writes. "He had crossed the line in his own mind, even though the NSC [National Security Council] had never met--and never would meet--to discuss the decision."
Powell refers to the address to the U.N. as a "blot." It was during that address that he appealed to the international body to support the United States because the country--albeit, erroneously--believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, notes a Bloomberg report on the book.
The speech and the facts surrounding the speech serve as a lesson to business leaders on the importance of staying skeptical and following their intuition, Powell writes.
"Yes, a blot, a failure will always be attached to me and my UN presentation," the former U.S. secretary of state writes. ... "I am mad mostly at myself for not having smelled the problem. My instincts failed me."
Powell points a finger at Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, the former vice president's chief of staff, as the ones responsible for providing the inaccurate information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, the Huffington Post reports.
In the book, Powell notes the weapons of mass destruction case "was a disaster."
"I learned later that Scooter Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, had authored the unusable presentation, not the NSC staff. And several years after that, I learned from Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice that the idea of using Libby had come from the Vice President, who had persuaded the President to have Libby, a lawyer, write the 'case' as a lawyer's brief and not as an intelligence assessment."
Powell, though, takes credit for rejecting continued appeals from Cheney to add "assertions that had been rejected months earlier to links between Iraq and 9/11 and other terrorist acts," according to the Huffington Post report.

15 summertime jobs

15 summertime jobs

15 summertime jobs, With much of the country experiencing warmer-than-average temperatures this spring, it's almost like summer is already here. If you're tired of being cooped up in an office, or you're a job seeker in search of a cubicle-free gig, check out these 15 jobs that will get you outside this summer.

More a headache than an honor

More a headache than an honor

More a headache than an honor, I, for one, would be relieved if from now on, brides included only family in their wedding parties.
Don’t get me wrong: I love my friends and enjoy celebrating them. In fact, when assigned a bridesmaid task, I’ve often spent time and money beyond what was expected.
Yet how does honoring a couple’s decision to wed translate into responsibility for organizing, patronizing, attending several parties, buying multiple gifts, and purchasing expensive dresses worn only once?
In fact, bridesmaid101.com lists no fewer than 21 responsibilities to be shouldered by a bridesmaid. The daunting workload includes such activities as scouting locations, addressing invitations, and registering for gifts because “many times the groom does not want to go register with his bride-to-be.