President Barack Obama misled voters about views on same-sex marriage for his own benefit when he said in 2008 he opposed gay marriage for religious reasons, former top aide David Axelrod says in his new book, Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.
“I’m just not very good at bullsh--ing,” Obama told Axelrod after he publicly stated his opposition to same-sex marriage, according to the book.
Axelrod says that he knew Obama supported same-sex marriage during the 2008 campaign, but told the then-senator that publicly announcing it could hurt him politically. At the time, Obama said he supported civil unions, but not marriage.
“Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’ ” Axelrod writes.
Obama opposed same-sex marriage through his 2008 election, then said his thinking was evolving. In 2012, he changed his mind. He said he was influenced by his wife and young daughters.
But according to the book, Obama told his staff to find a way for him to speak in support of same-sex marriage months earlier before a remark by Vice President Joe Biden prompted him to do so. Campaign Manager Jim Messina told him he could lose the state of North Carolina in the election.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at his daily briefing Tuesday that he wouldn’t “disagree or quibble” with Axelrod’s account, pointing out that he was in the “front row seat to history.”
“I think the president’s record on these issues speaks to this even better than I possibly could,” Earnest said.