Kerry gets to pick his own poison (DOMA ) [View All]

[windansea]

The Washington Post reports today that John Kerry is considering--or at least refusing to rule out--supporting an amendment to the Massachusetts constitution outlawing gay marriage. According to basic political logic, this shouldn't be a tough call. The Republicans have made no secret of their plans to attack Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal during this fall's campaign; he isn't likely to be helped by the fact that the Democratic National Convention will take place in Boston--possibly at a time when gay men and women are flocking to the state to take advantage of its recent supreme court ruling on gay marriage.

The problem for Kerry is that the character flaw that's most dogged him over the course of his career is his tendency to take whichever side of an issue he deems (often incorrectly) most politically expedient. Worse, the one counter-example Kerry supporters tend to point to when confronted with this rap is Kerry's courageous opposition to the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which he derided as politically-motivated "gay-bashing" (and which it almost certainly was).

For a lot of other Democrats, the gay marriage decision might be seen as a rare deviation from a record of either relative moderation (if they decided to oppose an amendment banning it) or relative principle (if they decided to support it). For Kerry, the gay marriage issue puts his two biggest weaknesses in direct conflict with one another--whichever way he decides to go, his decision risks crystallizing a major character flaw in a way that's likely to define him for the duration of the campaign. The question for the Kerry camp, I guess, is whether he'd rather be defined as a hopeless liberal or a hopeless panderer. Not a choice I'd want to make.

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