Double Down: Game Change 2012 (47 page)

The picture was hazier with two other components of the coalition of the ascendant: Latinos and the young. Obama’s leads with them were even greater than with women: a jaw-dropping forty-seven points, 69–22, among Hispanics, and twenty-six points, 60–34, among voters aged eighteen to thirty-four. The problem with both was a lack of enthusiasm.

Obama’s relationship with the Latino community had been rocky. There was disappointment about his failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform. There was dismay about the 2010 defeat of the DREAM Act, which promised a path to citizenship for those who arrived in the country illegally as children. There was disquiet over the administration’s having carried out a record number of deportations. As for young folks, they had been brutalized by the awful job market and deflated by the paucity of progress on issues they cared about, especially climate change.

Romney’s self-inflicted wounds with Hispanics were severe. Beyond the toxic rhetoric of “self-deportation,” Mitt had vowed to veto the DREAM Act
if it were passed and proudly welcomed the support of some of the political figures most despised by Latinos for their harsh restrictionist stances on immigration—from former California governor Pete Wilson to Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach. But the Obamans feared that Boston and the conservative super PACs would wage a viciously negative ad assault designed to suppress Latino turnout. And they worried that the kids would do what they usually did on Election Day: shrug and stay home.

The Obamans had a little more than six months to eradicate these cases of electoral ennui. On April 14, in an interview with Univision, the president promised to pursue immigration reform in 2013 if he were reelected. A week later, he devoted his Saturday radio address to his support for forestalling a hike in interest rates on federally subsidized student loans, and then set off on a barnstorming tour of colleges in Colorado, Iowa, and North Carolina.

Behind the curtain, more moves were afoot, in particular the possibility of implementing a modified version of the DREAM Act through executive action. Obama’s political team was divided over the proposal. Plouffe worried it might be seen as amnesty by fiat, raising the hackles of white working- and middle-class voters in states such as Ohio and Virginia, while others argued that it would jolt Hispanics out of their tepidness toward Obama. The president was leaning toward doing it, persuaded by the merits of the policy and willing to roll the dice on the politics.

The most furtive scurrying, though, revolved around an even more freighted proposition: Obama at last revealing himself as in favor of gay marriage. Since the September 2011 meeting in the Roosevelt Room when he told his people he was ready to go public, they had deliberated over the execution and timing ad infinitum and ad nauseam—but now a rough plan was in place. On Saturday, May 5, Obama would formally kick off his campaign with rallies in Ohio and Virginia. The next week, Chicago would flood the airwaves with a sixty-second positive ad, backed by a $25 million buy, in nine battleground states. Shortly thereafter, Obama would cast off the cloak of obfuscation and make civil rights history.

The plan was solid. The plan was sound. The plan was exciting, even. But there was one small problem with the plan: someone forgot to tell Uncle Joe.

•   •   •

B
IDEN HAD NEVER GIVEN
much thought to same-sex matrimony. He was all good with the gays, no doubt about that; Joe had no patience for discrimination of any kind toward anyone. He remembered that, when he was a boy, his father spoke out when people made anti-gay cracks. In the Senate and the White House, Biden had gay staffers—though he wasn’t sure who or how many. (His gaydar was nonfunctional.) His wife, Jill, was for gay marriage, as were his children. But his church was against it, and that meant something to Joe, as the contraception hoo-ha demonstrated all too clearly.

Biden’s epiphany came at the end of April, when he was out in L.A. on a fund-raising trip. At an LGBT round table at the home of a gay couple, he spent some time in the kitchen with them and their two young kids, who gave him flowers; the warm family scene moved him. The first questioner at the event asked, What do you really think about us—gay people?

I think it’s all about love, Biden said, and then it dawned on him:
It’s time.

The L.A. sojourn was part of a busy and satisfying spring for the VP. After the uneasiness between him and the Davids in the fall, his role in the campaign had been carved out cleanly. Chicago told his chief of staff, Bruce Reed, that Biden would be the “sharp tip of the spear”—stepping out early, ahead of Obama, and framing the argument against the Republicans and Romney. In a series of big policy speeches on topics from manufacturing to tax reform to foreign policy, he’d done the job with gusto.

Returning from the West Coast, Biden started preparing for an upcoming appearance on
Meet the Press.
In his nearly forty years in Washington, he had been on the show some forty times. (Only Bob Dole and John McCain had made more appearances.) Joe loved the format. He loved the set. He felt right at home. None of which deterred his staff from prepping him to the gills. One of Biden’s challenges in transitioning from the Senate to the vice presidency had been getting used to the fact that he was no longer a free agent; that whenever he opened his mouth, he was representing the administration. His people always worried when he went on
Meet
that his comfort level would lull him into behaving like a senator again—into speaking just for himself.

So Bidenworld approached his murder-boarding with diligence and
care. The West Wing was involved, too; Plouffe and Carney sat in. Over several days, they devoted upwards of twelve hours to drilling Biden. They covered domestic policy, economics, foreign affairs, the campaign, the works. The only notable thing they somehow left out was gay marriage.

It was Friday, May 4, when Biden sat down with David Gregory to pretape their chat for that Sunday’s show. When Gregory posed the question, Biden didn’t think twice—and made a beeline for the kind of place his advisers feared. “I am vice president of the United States of America; the president sets the policy,” he said. “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.”

Biden went home after the taping thinking that he hadn’t made news and had done nothing wrong. That he’d been clear he wasn’t enunciating new policy, just stating a personal opinion. He knew that Obama was planning to voice his support for same-sex marriage at some point this year, but he had no inkling that anything had been settled. Late that afternoon, his staffers sent a transcript of the interview over to their West Wing colleagues, highlighting the portion on gay marriage. Bidenworld assured the VP that no heads were exploding in the vicinity of the Oval.

Plouffe’s head was still firmly attached to his neck, but he wanted Biden’s on a platter.
WHAT THE FUCK?
was his reaction when he took a look at the transcript.
We were going to do this! In the next two weeks! As a fucking surprise! HOW CAN THIS HAVE HAPPENED?!

Plouffe had been planning the coming-out party since early in the year. When Obama returned from the Christmas holidays in Hawaii, he raised again with Plouffe and Pfeiffer the readiness he expressed in the fall: to let the world know that his evolution on gay marriage was complete. We can’t stall out the clock through the election with me not telling voters I’m for gay marriage and then turn around after Election Day and say, “Oh, by the way . . . ,” Obama said. So the next time I’m asked, I’m just going to say it.

Plouffe and Pfeiffer implored Obama to reconsider. This is gonna be a big civil rights moment in American history, said Pfeiffer. Let’s not do it
because Jake Tapper asks you at a press conference. Let’s do this in the time and moment of your choosing.

“Find the time and moment soon rather than later,” Obama replied.

For the next four months, an inner circle within the president’s inner circle explored options and weighed political implications. Benenson polled on the subject; subtle questions were thrown into the campaign’s focus groups. The potential benefits were clear: rousing young voters and raking in dollars from gay donors. As were the potential costs: turning off culturally conservative Democrats and independents in critical states such as Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. There was also a broader risk: that undecided voters across the board would say, Why in the world is Obama focusing on
this
when the economy is still so shaky?

Plouffe was a rigorous, data-driven, nothing-to-chance operative, sometimes wrong but rarely in doubt. But on gay marriage, his mental spreadsheet spit out pure uncertainty.
Could help, could hurt, could make winning harder, could make winning easier—it’s a crapshoot,
he thought. Messina was even more nervous. Axelrod and Pfeiffer both believed that Obama would be a better candidate if he were being authentic, but they saw the dangers, too. Only Michelle and Jarrett seemed immune to the heebie-jeebies; they counseled the president to do what was in his heart, politics be damned.

The queasiness in Chicago and the White House led to the kind of slow walking and stutter stepping that produces four-hour miles. Endless meetings were held. Plans were made and scrapped. There were always excuses for delay—the payroll-tax extension, the contraception dustup, the anniversary of bin Laden’s death.

Obama, meanwhile, was increasingly antsy. He understood the political hazards in play but took comfort in a conversation he’d had a year earlier with Ken Mehlman. In addition to his Bush and RNC pedigrees, Mehlman was a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama’s who made headlines when he strode out of the closet in 2010. Mehlman argued that, as a political attribute, strong leadership transcended issues. In 1984, he told the president, one out of four Ted Kennedy backers in the Democratic nomination contest voted in the general election for Ronald Reagan. “This can be a political
winner for you,” Mehlman said. “It will show you’re a guy who stands up for what he believes.”

Obama was sick and tired of not being that guy on this issue. He had long considered his gay marriage answer weak; now it was becoming embarrassing. He assumed the question would come up in his debates with Romney, and he dreaded answering it lamely. More immediately, there was the Democratic platform at the party’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, in which party members and activists wanted to include an unequivocal endorsement of marriage equality. I am not going to have a convention where I am taking a different position on this than my party, Obama told Plouffe. It’s not sustainable.

Charlotte was scheduled to start on September 4. Plouffe and the rest of the inner-inner circle wanted a decent interval between Obama’s coming out and the party jamboree. They settled on the second half of May. Obama was booked to appear on
The View
on May 14, when he would be in New York for an LGBT fund-raiser. Maybe they would do it there. Or maybe in a more decorous interview setting. (Mehlman advised Plouffe to use a solitary female interviewer and soft lights.) No final decision on timing or venue had been made, but Obama knew it would be soon. To Plouffe, it was essential that there be no impression his hand was being forced by the convention.

All of which explained Plouffe’s fury at Biden. As convoluted as the VP’s comments on
Meet
had been, it was obvious that the press was going to cast them as an endorsement of gay marriage—and thus make it seem that Obama’s hand indeed had been forced, but by Delaware’s favorite son instead of the North Carolina convention.

The West Wing labored mightily that weekend to refill the toothpaste tube, with attempted walk-backs, tweets, and a flurry of phone calls to reporters. But by late Monday afternoon, May 7, the White House was caked in Crest. On
Morning Joe,
Education Secretary Arne Duncan was asked if he supported gay marriage and replied flatly, “Yes, I do.” At his press briefing, Carney was peppered with more than two dozen questions on the subject (“He opposes bans on gay marriage, but he doesn’t yet support gay marriage?” “Why can’t you from this podium say whether or not the president supports or opposes same-sex marriage?”) and some outright catcalls (“You’re trying to have it both ways before an election”).

The next morning, Plouffe and Pfeiffer met with Obama in the Oval, told him they thought the situation was untenable, and advised that he do an interview the next day with ABC’s Robin Roberts.

Having caught the highlights of Carney’s briefing, Obama was inclined to agree. “I’ve got to put Jay out of his misery,” he said, and signed on with the plan.

Obama’s attitude toward Biden was his usual mixture of protectiveness, amused detachment, and eye-rolling exasperation. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t worked up. He left all that to Plouffe. But on Tuesday he began to express annoyance, not at what Biden had done but about the fact that he hadn’t heard a peep from Joe since he unleashed the shitstorm. It was redolent of an incident in 2008, when a Biden gaffe in October—a prediction on the stump that if Barack were elected, “an international crisis” would erupt within six months to test his mettle—provoked anger in Obama but induced no immediate apology from Joe. The silence had bothered the candidate then; it was bothering the president now.

Biden was on the road that Monday and Tuesday. Also simmering. Ever since
Meet,
various West Wing and Chicago persons had been dumping all over him (anonymously) in the press—casting aspersions on his motives, claiming he had privately opposed the idea of Obama coming out and then publicly front-ran the president to further his 2016 ambitions. Joe was shocked and hurt by the treatment, found it incomprehensible. “I don’t understand why everyone’s so mad at me,” he told a confidant. I was asked a question. I answered it honestly. I said something I know the president agrees with and was going to say anyway. What’s the harm? Is the president upset? Or just his staff?