NYT's Maureen Dowd: Seeking Original Bliss [View all]

[Scuba]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/opinion/sunday/dowd-seeking-original-bliss.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120513

The controlling Obama team did not like the fact that the uncontrollable Biden’s forthright statement to David Gregory about being “comfortable” with gay marriage left the president looking like an equivocator, once more lagging in the leadership department.

So Obama aides began anonymously trashing the vice president, not a pretty spectacle given how loyal Biden is to the president. They told Politico that Biden’s getting the jump on Obama was particularly annoying given that Biden had backed the Defense of Marriage Act as a senator in the 1990s while Obama “has actually taken steps to repeal the Clinton-era law that defined marriage as something that could only take place between a man and a woman.”

“And it chafed Obama’s team,” Politico said, “that Biden had, at times, privately argued for the president to hold off on his support of marriage equality to avoid a backlash among Catholic voters in battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

Biden felt compelled to apologize to the president for inadvertently nudging him to do the right thing.