Here’s a suggestion: how about before proclaiming that Gov. Jim, Douglas came down on the wrong or the right “side of history” this week, everybody pause and await a little…history.

Who tends to make her own decisions at a time of her own choosing.

Not that Douglas’s decision to announce that he would veto the gay marriage bill does not need analysis. But the analysis could use a little humility. How this will all play out in the end will be known in the end, whatever and whenever that is. Not before.

To begin with, there is no reason not  to accept the governor at his word when he says he genuinely opposes the bill. Contrary to what may be public opinion, politicians do have real values, feelings, and predilections. So when Douglas said, “like President Obama and other leaders on both sides of the aisle, I believe that marriage should remain between a man and woman,” he probably meant it.

(As, it seems, does the President. Yes, it’s the safer political opinion, but according to several reports from folks close to the White House, Obama means it).

But sincerity is in no way inconsistent with calculation. To the contrary, it is common for people – and not just politicians – to conclude that what is in their interest also reflects their values.

In this case, it is easy to see why killing the bill – or at least doing his best to kill it – is in Douglas’s political interest.

First of all, most Vermonters who are so pro-gay marriage that they might vote against him on this issue alone are going to vote against him anyway. They tend to be Democrats and liberals, who don’t vote for any Republican, even this one.

Sure, lots of Republicans and conservatives favor gay marriage. For one thing, lots of Republicans and conservatives are gay, and some of them want to get married. No doubt  some of them are plenty miffed at the governor right now. But miffed enough 19 months from now to vote for a Democrat? A few (perhaps the gays who were hoping to get married) but not many.

So in making his announcement Wednesday, Douglas was angering (mostly) his political foes. But he was placating his political base. In Vermont, unlike most of the rest of the country, the anti-gay marriage side is the minority. But it is not a small minority, and it is mostly Republican. Incumbent office-holders do not like to displease their base.

Because doing so threatens to create the one thing incumbent office-holders hate most – a primary.

At first glance, it seems absurd even to consider the possibility that Jim Douglas – who is all that stands between the Vermont Republican Party and annihilation – could lose a primary. But here are two scenarios under which it just might happen:

1-A really competitive Democratic primary leaving only the most conservative voters to choose a Republican ballot next year;

2-A really un-competitive Democratic primary inspiring thousands of Democrats to meddle in the GOP primary to vote for the challenger, who’d presumably be easier to beat in the general election.

Then there’s scenario three: not a primary but an independent challenger from the right in the general election. Sure, this is the state in which the so-called religious right is probably weaker than anywhere. Still, incumbent office-holders dislike third-party challenges almost as much as they abhor primaries.

All this is speculation. If Douglas and his advisors have been talking of such matters, no word of the discussions has leaked out. Nor is there any evidence that the anti-gay marriage faction has transmitted any political threat to the governor.

But perhaps it didn’t have to. Craig Benson, head of the anti-gay marriage organization Take it to the People, said (by e-mail message), that to his knowledge “no one credible was saying that Douglas would be challenged in the Primary.”

But, Benson added, ” every once in a while …a ‘bad’ choice by a top Republican does bring out a strong Primary Candidate or GOP split-off party or coalition. Douglas knows this VT political history. No one should ever make the mistake of assuming that Douglas and his team have not fully (explored) all the possibilities on the table before a choice is made.”

There is another reason to suspect that the governor carefully calculated the potential political benefit of his veto threat. The reason is that he probably understands the personal price he might be paying.

To understand that price, it’s necessary to undertake a quick look at Douglas’s political prospects beyond the governorship, and  a very abbreviated assessment of his six years as governor.

His prospects , though he’ll only be 58 this June, are dim. Absent some unlikely political tsunami, he couldn’t beat either Sen. Patrick Leahy or Sen. Bernie Sanders. Even with this move to the right, he’s still far too moderate (just look at how he’s cozying up to Obama) to get a cabinet seat in a Republican administration, if there is one.

So governor of Vermont is what he’s going to be and how he’s going to be remembered. And at the risk of  inspiring opprobrium from the state’s liberal commentariate, one has to say that it’s hard to avoid judging his governorship a success.  It has been free of scandal (not counting his penchant for putting political operatives on the public payroll; but that’s a common and relatively inexpensive abuse). It has been competent. It has been steady. The state pays its bills and has a high credit rating.

But the Douglas years and the Douglas Administration have been neither inspiring nor innovative nor audacious. They have trod no new paths. Douglas’s de facto campaign motto is “Vote for Me. I Won’t Do Much.”

Not a bad motto. Perhaps a governor who doesn’t do much is better than a governor who tried to do a lot. Especially in a state with a gung-ho Legislature. One need not be a conservative Republican to suspect that this state is better off because some of the proposals of the liberal Democrats who run the Legislature never became law.

The essential fact here is that what Douglas did this week is how he will be remembered. He has no other legacy. Improper though it may be to say out loud (this is something reporters often say in private), in making his announcement Wednesday, Douglas determined what will follow the first comma of his obituary (may it not be printed for years), which will start something like, “Former Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas, who stopped his state from becoming the first to enact same-sex marriage without a court order….”

He must know this, and he must know that it could put him on that “wrong side of history.”

Or maybe not. Right now, a substantial majority of Americans oppose gay marriage. According to one recent poll – by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life -it’s a 59-to 32 percent majority. But that’s only because the margins of everybody over 35 are so huge – two-to-one for respondents in their 40s and 50s, even higher for older folks.

But it isn’t that younger people are overwhelmingly in favor of same-sex unions. They’re split. The younger they are, the more likely they are to be in favor. Maybe, then, teenagers under 18, who are not polled but who will be of voting age in a few years, are even more pro-gay marriage, so in another 15 or 20 years, the majority will be on that side.  Adding to that suspicion is that another fast-growing segment of the population – the college educated -  are also more evenly split, with younger college graduates most likely to be in favor. There is even some indication that the country is getting less religious, especially in the Northeast and most especially in New England, where about a third of the people report themselves un-churched or religiously indifferent.

But then, some people tend to get more conservative as they get older. Some of them even get more religious.

The right side of history, this being a democracy, will probably end up being the side where most of the people are.  Whether Douglas ends up on that side remains un-knowable. What is indisputable is that he has chosen his side.

Tags: gay marriage, Jim Douglas

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 12:15 am and is filed under Politics & Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.