Given today’s publicity over student loan indebtedness reaching a cool trillion dollars (see Daniel Luzer’s post on this at College Guide), and Mitt Romney’s earlier undercutting of their position, it’s not surprising that House Republicans are signalling that they, too, will support extending current interest rates for student loans.

But there is, of course, a wrinkle, per Politico’s Jake Sherman:

To avoid adding to the debt, Republicans will try to take money from a public health prevention fund in the Democrats’ 2010 health care law. Senate Democrats are aiming for a separate mechanism to offset the price tag of the extension. And that could set up a showdown between the two bodies and the president during this hotly contested election year.

In their usual hammer-headed way, House Republicans will try to combine one popular position (extending current student loan interest rates) with another (gutting ObamaCare). They are counting on no one much noticing that the element of ObamaCare they are raiding in this particular maneuver is funding for the one health care reform everyone claims to support: a stronger focus on preventive health care.

How Senate Democrats and the White House frame their response to this gambit will be interesting and important.

The relatively long interview that the president conducted with Jann Wenner and Eric Bates of the Rolling Stone was short on fireworks or revelations or new policy pronouncements, but was a pretty good indication of Obama’s political and policy fluency at this stage of his presidency. As the title of the published interview indicated, he seems “Ready for the fight.” Sure, there was a lot of light banter of the sort interviewers conduct with presidents to set them at ease. Since this was for Rolling Stone, there was more talk than would otherwise be the case about his musical interests. Fans of Obama, and enemies cutting and pasting lines for the next characterization of the president as an elitist comfortable with hippies, drug abusers, and sodomites, will both find this stuff interesting.

Wenner and Bates also asked several questions reflecting ongoing concerns of progressives ambivalent about Obama’s priorities and tactics, dealing with marriage equality, drug enforcement, prosecution of corporate criminals, and climate change. By and large, Obama was persuasive in dealing with these concerns, albeit a mite defensive.

But the real heart of the interview involved his views on Republicans, and how he will characterize them in the coming general election campaign. Obama by no means abandoned his pleasant talk about most Republicans being decent people of good will. He even said nice things about John Boehner, which, all things being considered, might have been designed to bug the hell out of him. For the most part, he blamed Republican obstructionism and extremism on the “political class and activists” generally, and on ideological commissars like Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist. He expressed hopes that another electoral defeat for the GOP might “break the fever” (an apt choice of words) and reempower Republicans who want to return to those “traditions in which a Dwight Eisenhower can build an interstate highway system.”

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I would have thought that the one thing we could expect from Allen West is that if he didn’t have the decency to apologize for his bizarre characterization of “78 to 81” Democratic Members of Congress (later modified to refer to the Progressive Caucus) as members of the Communist Party, he’d at least shut up about it.

But no. West has published a column at The Hill that seeks to defend this idiotic slander as a brave effort to spur a “debate” over fundamental principles. Those offended by being red-baited are, he suggests, focusing on “semantics” and “nuance,” qualities that he found deadly when on the “battlefield.”

Well, nobody’s going to accuse West of “nuance,” though he gets very slippery in his column:

Specific “party” affiliation is not the point of the discussion — it is rather affiliation with a set of ideals. Conservatives adhere to the ideals of individual responsibility and freedom, limited government, a free market and a strong defense. Those on the liberal left adhere to a collective ideal, directed and controlled by a centralized government to guarantee and enforce social and economic justice.

You can call this what you wish. The esteemed scholar and author Mark Levin [!] calls it “statism.” In our lifetime, the unpalatable and pejorative brands “socialist” and “communist” have been replaced with the more user-friendly “progressive” term.

But this is not a discussion about labels.

Of course not, congressman, which is why you chose the most inflammatory label imaginable, right? But that’s a quibble, since “progressive” is just the latest name for the people who used to go by “socialist” or “communist,” as the eminent historian Glenn Beck has so often explained. After all, it should be obvious to anyone that supporting an approach to health care crafted by the Heritage Foundation and test-driven by the 2012 Republican presidential nominee is indistinguishable from supporting a dictatorship of the proletariat, state ownership of the means of production, and the liquidation of the kulaks. The total disappearance of liberty and private property in those Western countries (all of them!) with far greater government involvement in the economy than anything anyone in the Progressive Caucus has ever demanded is so obvious as to require no documentation, of course.

I understand that West is a notorious wingnut whom it is difficult to take seriously. But by the same token, Robert Draper’s apparently authoritative insider account of the current Congress calls West “arguably the most influential member of the freshman class.” The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee has suggested he’d make an ideal running-mate for Mitt Romney.

So long as West is being treated with such respect by his fellow partisans, then he’s definitely fair game. And if he persists in smearing Democrats in a manner that would have embarrassed Joe McCarthy, and then blames the objects of that smear for being a little oversensitive about the “nuances” of their relative affinity to totalitarian murderers, then every single member of the GOP who doesn’t denounce him deserves to be taken to the nearest elementary school and taught some basic world history.

So the exchange at Ten Miles Square between Mark Schmitt and Brink Lindsey over issues raised by Tim Noah’s new book The Great Divergence is complete, with each writer publishing three interactive posts. As you might expect from a debate between a progressive and a libertarian, there was plenty to argue about, but what Schmitt and Lindsay most exhibited was a different set of predispositions they brought to the table. Schmitt regards growing economic inequality as presumptively suspect and likely the result of public policies that are in danger of producing a “vicious circle” of privilege and barriers to upward mobility, while Lindsay simply thinks it’s worth examining and is quick to suggest that inequality is largely the product of otherwise benign economic, political and social trends.

A characteristic exchange was over the role that the decline in union power might have played in producing greater income inequality. Lindsey regards unions as instruments for forcing “above-market” business costs, and their decline as promoting greater efficiency and lower consumer prices. Schmitt responds that union “power,” such as it is, is essential to the establishment of market prices to begin with, and moreover, has been dwarfed by the ability of executives to extract “above-market” pay and benefits, with both the decline of collective baragaining and the rise of executive compensation boosting inequality without necessarily benefitting consumers or anyone else.

Both writers discuss different measurements of inequality—based on income, wealth, or consumption. Schmitt makes the excellent point that wealth inequality is largely generational, reflecting the happier circumstances that today’s seniors enjoyed when they were buying houses whose value consistently rose, planning for retirement with generous private pensions, and “making ends meet” without relying nearly as much on debt as more recent cohorts. Both writers agree that inequality in educational opportunity is an increasingly important inhibitor of social mobility. Both also agree that a major shift in immigration policy encouraging the migration of unskilled labor has worsened indicators of inequality, though Schmitt rates it as a far-less important factor than does Lindsey, and both consider the super-accumulation of wealth by the financial sector problematic, though Lindsey is more concerned with its impact on economic efficiency than on inequality.

You really should read the whole exchange, since both writers get pretty far into specialty literature and often raise issues the other correspondent does not have the time or space to address fully. I came away from the exchange more troubled than before by the structural underpinnings of inequality, and far less sanguine that Brink Lindsey that it’s somehow mostly for the best.

Based on the initial oral arguments, it appears unlikely the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down Arizona’s influential S.B. 1070 which enlists state and local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration laws. Portions of the law might not survive, however, and it appears the Court might make its validation strictly contingent on assurances the state is making that it will implement the law without usurping the federal government’s power to determine the ultimate treatment of undocumented people arrested under its authority. As is generally the case, Anthony Kennedy could be the swing vote in the decision, though oral arguments indicated that even the Court’s “liberal bloc” is skeptical about the federal government’s case.

But something that Court-watchers need to keep in mind is that a central issue in the court-of-public-opinion debate over Arizona’s laws and those elsewhere it has inspired—the likelihood that law enforcement officers will be encouraged or even forced to engaged in ethnic “profiling” in determining whether to suspect an arrestee’s immigration status—is not before the Court at all.

Here’s Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSBlog on this key point:

Assuming that the Court does allow most, if not all, of S.B. 1070′s four sections to go into effect, that still would not amount to final constitutional clearance for any of the sections. The case reached the Justices in a preliminary state, and there will be ongoing challenges in lower courts when the case is returned to them. Moreover, there are challenges to some of those provisions that the Court did not cosnider on Wednesday, because they are not part of the federal government’s legal assault on the Arizona statute.

The most important of those remaining challenges is the claim that at least two of the four sections give police authority to arrest and detain people just because they look like foreigners — in a phrase, “racial profiling.” While some of the amici in this case did raise that in their briefs, the federal government has studiously avoided the claim. And, the moment that Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr., took his place at the lectern to make the U.S. challenge, Chief Justice Roberts sought to make sure that he did not talk about “racial profiling.”

Roberts said: “Before you get into what the case is about, I’d like to clear up at the outset what it’s not about. No part of your argument has to do with rcil or ethnic profiling, does it? I saw none of that in your brief.” Verrilli said that was correct. But the Chief Justice wanted to be sure: “Okay. So this is not a case about ethnic profiling.” The Solicitor General answered: “We’re not making any allegation about racial or ethnic profiling in this case.”

Because the feds are currently going after S.B. 1070 on the constitutonal issue of alleged state usurpation of federal immigration enforcement authority, they won’t “go there” to the profiling issue, at least not at this stage of the legal battle. But it could well come up in a future case, as it will come up in the broader political debate over immigration policy that this Supreme Court review may well reignite.

In between posts, I’ve been carefully reading the Rolling Stone interview with Barack Obama, and will write about it later today. In the meantime, here are some mid-day morsels:

* At WaPo’s Wonkblog, Brad Plumer has an excellent summary of yesterday’s Washington Monthly/New American Foundation event on the airline industry.

* While you are at Wonkblog, check out Ezra Klein’s reminder of the damage a Presidenet Romney could inflict with a Republican-controlled Congress; the Ryan Budget, for example, could be enacted and implemented via reconciliation, making the filibuster irrelevant.

* Newt Gingrich indicates he’ll end his candidacy next week. Wonder if Mitt asked his creditors to foreclose on Gingrich ‘12?

* Supremes begin oral arguments on Arizona immigration law; live blog is here

* And speaking of immigration, my TNR column on Romney’s self-inflicted problems on immigration issues is here.

And in sort-of-non-political news:

* Joe Francis announces winner of “Hottest Girl in America” contest will be offered internship in office of Sen. Mark Pryor. I’d love to see the Arkansas polling on this one.

Back in just a bit.

Much of the discussion of the recent Vatican crackdown on American nuns for failure to follow the moral and political priorities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has quite naturally focused on the immediate controversies that likely precipitated the action. Most notable has been the conspicuous disinclination of groups representing the nuns to join in the USCCB’s joint campaign with conservative evangelicals to attack the Obama administration as a menace to “religious liberty.”

But in a characteristically angry and erudite post at the New York Review of Books site, Catholic scholar and papal critic Garry Wills suggested that the crackdown may raise some more fundamental symbolic issues that could pose a serious credibility problem for the hierarchy. Basically, Catholic lay people tend to respect nuns more than bishops:

The Vatican has issued a harsh statement claiming that American nuns do not follow their bishops’ thinking. That statement is profoundly true. Thank God, they don’t. Nuns have always had a different set of priorities from that of bishops. The bishops are interested in power. The nuns are interested in the powerless. Nuns have preserved Gospel values while bishops have been perverting them. The priests drive their own new cars, while nuns ride the bus (always in pairs). The priests specialize in arrogance, the nuns in humility.

Wills goes on to discuss his own experience with nuns over the course of his life, which has reinforced his impression that the sisters are closely associated with everything that makes Catholics proud of the faith. He doesn’t even have to mention that the Bishops and the all-male priesthood have not exactly been inspiring a lot of pride in recent years. So if the battle between bishops and nuns escalates, or if the latter are vengefully humiliated, there may be some serious collateral damage to the credibility of the hierachy that could outweigh whatever they gain from “restoring discipline.”

Like many other observers, Wills also notes that the Vatican chose to pair its actions against the nuns with a vastly more charitable new posture towards a group of right-wing schismatics whose defiance of Church discipline has been a lot more spectacular than anything displayed by the “radical feminists” of the religious orders:

It is typical of the pope’s sense of priorities that, at the very time when he is quashing an independent spirit in the church’s women, he is negotiating a welcome back to priests who left the church in protest at the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. These men, with their own dissident bishop, Marcel Lefebvre, formed the Society of Saint Pius X—the Pius whose Secretariat of State had a monsignor (Umberto Benigni) who promoted the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. Pope Benedict has already lifted the excommunication of four bishops in the Society of Saint Pius X, including that of Richard Williamson, who is a holocaust denier. Now a return of the whole body is being negotiated.

The whole manuever suggests a bit of an internal counter-reformation in the Church that comes perilously close to validating the views of hyper-traditionalists who think Vatican II went “too far,” and that it’s time to rein in not just nuns but all those “liberal Catholics” who believe they can remain in good standing while practicing contraception or voting for pro-choice political candidates. Indeed, you don’t have to read too deeply in “traditionalist” literature to find a strong sentiment that American Catholics as a whole need to be “disciplined.” If that’s where the Vatican and the Bishops are headed, they may discover the laity will not be as humble as the nuns in taking their medicine.

The big economic news today is that the United Kingdom is officially undergoing a “double-dip recession,” as its economy registered a second consecutive quarter of negative growth. Last time that happened was back in 1975: you know, when Labour Wasn’t Working.

But instead of paving the way for a Thatcherite austerity regime, the current double-dip recession could spell major political trouble for the Thatcherite austerity regime of David Cameron. As Paul Krugman notes today, Cameron isn’t just bringing back memories of the mid-to-late 1970s, but of an even darker era:

When David Cameron became PM, and announced his austerity plans — buying completely into both the confidence fairy and the invisible bond vigilantes — many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic. Pundits here urged Obama to “do a Cameron”; Cameron and Osborne were the toast of Very Serious People everywhere.

Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.

Britain is also unique in having chosen the Big Wrong freely, facing neither pressure from bond markets nor conditions imposed by Berlin and Frankfurt.

Now, the defense I hear from Cameron apologists is that the austerity mostly hasn’t even hit yet. But that’s really not much of a defense. Remember, the austerity was supposed to work by inspiring confidence; where’s the confidence?

British economist Richard Murphy suggests we are seeing the self-refutation of British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s very specific predictions that public austerity would quickly produce private abundance:

Osborne offered us his vision two year ago. It was of “expansionary fiscal contraction”.

His argument was that the more he cut government spending the more people would spend, liberated by knowing that if he succeeded in his aim of balancing the budget tax cuts would follow, letting them repay debt they’d take on now to spend. It hasn’t happened. People who face the prospect of unemployment, increased cost for things that were previously provided by the state, lower pensions, higher cost of childcare and the uncertainty of recession have simply stop spending.

And Osborne argued that as government cut back business would rush to fill the space that he would create in the economy because they would be liberated from the yoke of government interference in their activity. It hasn’t happened. Businesses have seen that their biggest customer is not spending and have cut their investment, reduced their employment plans, closed their premise, withdrawn from the High Street and battened down their hatches in the hope of survival: the last thing that they have done is expand.

This should be of great interest to Americans who could care less about British politics, because “expansionary fiscal contraction” is precisely the Big Macroeconomic Theory of the Republican Party, as expressed constantly from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail. It’s the how-to-fight-a-recession doctrine that has supposedly displaced that bad old Keynesianism. And it’s manifestly “Not Working” in the United Kingdom.

I don’t know if this is a significant finding at all, but it’s worth hearing: despite Mitt Romney’s “sweep” of five primaries yesterday, he’s still showing some notable weakness among GOP voters as compared to previous “presumptive nominees” at similar junctures. That’s the judgment that Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota’s Smart Politics site reaches after examining primary results in previous cycles dating back four decades:

Over the last 40 years there have been nearly 80 contests in which the presumptive Republican nominees played out the string after their last credible challenger exited the race.

In every one of these contests, the GOP frontrunner won at least 60 percent of the vote, even when ex- and long-shot candidates remained on the ballot.

But on Tuesday, Romney won only 56 percent of the vote in Delaware and 58 percent in Pennsylvania, home to Rick Santorum who dropped out on April 10th.

While Romney avoided the embarrassment of winning with a mere plurality, never has a presumptive nominee won a primary contest with such a low level of support at this stage of the race with his chief challenger no longer actively campaigning.

In Romney’s defense, his relatively poor performance in Pennsylvania was mainly attributable to the 18% drawn by former candidate and Pennsylvanian Rick Santorum. And in Delaware, Newt Gingrich decided to test Woody Allen’s adage that “90% of life is just showing up,” figuring First State votes would reward him for all but camping out there. He didn’t win, but did well enough to hold Mitt below 60%.

With 14—that’s right, 14—primaries still left on the calendar, we’ll have plenty of evidence to determine if PA and DE are just outliers, or if Ostermeier is on to something and Romney really is struggling to win over the hearts if not the minds of party conservatives.

Even as Mitt Romney cruised to a five-state primary victory last night, the word in RomneyWorld wasn’t about that: it was about the big speech he’d deliver in New Hampshire that would define his general election campaign message (or what Buzzfeed’s McKay Coppins called Romney’s 97th pivot to the general election).

So the speech was duly delivered, and while it was fine for purposes of giving primary voters a final tribute of dog whistles while introducing Mitt to non-primary voters, it’s probably not going to make anbody’s top one thousand list of political speeches they’ve heard. It has one clever and memorable line (“It’s still about the economy…and we’re not stupid.”), though it’s hard to get excited about a slogan that’s actually derived from an earlier Demoratic campaign’s slogan.

But as Ezra Klein noted, there’s rather a large piece missing at the heart of the speech:

It was a perfectly serviceable piece of work: competently written and competently delivered. But it didn’t contain an ounce of actual policy. If this speech was all you knew of Mitt Romney — if it was your one guide to his presidential campaign — you’d sum his message up as, “vote for me: I think America is great….”

Don’t believe me? The full speech is here. The first nine paragraphs are biography. The next eight are attack lines on President Obama (“It’s still about the economy …and we’re not stupid”). Then we get into Romney’s vision….

Romney never makes the turn to how he would achieve this America. Believing in it is apparently enough. The end result isn’t so much a preview of how Romney would govern the country as a game of “I Spy: America the Beautiful” edition.

I’m not a pollster. I don’t know if the American people want to hear about policy. Perhaps they prefer gauzy generalities. Perhaps they’re more interested in what candidates think of America than what they want to do for America. But if this is what the general election is going to be like, then it’s not going to be a clash of visions. It’s going to be a clash of adjectives.

Back when I used to do message training, we told elected officials that any political communication had three elements: embracing values, which told listeners who they were; articulating broad policy goals, which told them what they wanted to do; and offering ideas or proposals or programs, which told them how they were going to do it.

It’s the last element that was entirely missing from Romney’s Big Speech. And it’s not suprising when you think about it. The central “how” in Romney’s agenda is the Ryan Budget. It’s not very popular, but it’s also unavoidable, because it embraces so much of the national agenda.

If you were running for office, and you were required to support the Ryan Budget, would you talk about it very often in front of potentially unfriendly audiences? Probably not. No, you’d talk about your all-American values and experiences, and your vision for an America where rising tides lift all boats, evil mullahs fear to strike, and government doesn’t take money from good people to give it to bad people.

That’s where the Romney campaign is at this point, and it wil be interesting what tactics the Obama campaign uses to promote greater knowledge of what Romney actually plans to do.

You’d figure that last night’s dismal performance would be the last act of the saga of Gingrich ‘12. After choosing Delaware as his make-or-break state—one so small that even a campaign deep in debt and with no visible means of support could have a chance—Newt came across the finish line there a heart-breakingly close 29 points behind Mitt Romney, racking up well over seven thousand votes. In the other primaries held yesterday, he finished third behind Ron Paul.

Yet Gingrich didn’t drop out, and instead is spending time in North Carolina, where he’s lashing his campaign to the cause of Amendment One, the bid to make the Tar Heel State the unofficial intolerance capital of America. It’s as though he’s nostalgic for the salad days of his presidential run, when he was setting South Carolina on fire with his attacks of Barack Obama as the “food stamp president.”

Since his campaign earlier survived two or three near-death experiences, no one expected Gingrich to withdraw until the creditors were hammering on the door trying to repossess his microphone and Adam Smith ties. But it’s getting ridiculous now, particularly given the publicity around the reported $40,000 a day his Secret Service detail is costing taxpayers. He’s light-years away from having the five state delegations in his column that are necessary for his name to be placed in nomination at the Convention; Delaware was his last real shot. So if he won’t finally bury his candidacy, party leaders may soon be looking for a wooden stake.

I’m ending the day’s blogging closer to the official time of 5:30 EDT than has been customary since I took over (it’s often after 6:00 when I get my 12 posts done), because like you I want to get ready for the excitement of primary returns from Delaware, which are likely to determine whether Newt Gingrich continues his candidacy. Polls close in the First State at 8:00 EDT. In the meantime, here are some final news tidbits:

* Direct quote from Ann Romney: “I love the fact that there are women out there who don’t have a choice and they must go to work and they still have to raise the kids. Thank goodness that we value those people too. And sometimes life isn’t easy for any of us.” Somewhere, Hilary Rosen is laughing.

* November ballot initiative certified in California that would repeal death penalty. Supporters say campaign will focus on costs, which in this state is probably smart.

* Krugman confronts Chairman Bernanke with words of Professor Bernanke.

* Lilly Ledbetter mocks Mitt for his waffling on act bearing her name. I’ve met Lilly, and she defines the term “no-nonsense.”

* Headline in Boston Globe says New Hampshire could be “decisive battleground” state. If so, we’re in for a real barnburner since only four electoral votes are at stake there.

And in non-political news:

* Drake University crowns 33d annual “Beautiful Bulldog” winner, a pup named Tyler.

If you’re up late tonight, I’ll have a TNR column on Romney and the immigration issue up on their site at midnight EDT.

Selah.

Having mentioned in passing in the last post the president’s remarks on student loan interest rates in Chapel Hill today, I’d urge you to read Daniel Luzer’s post at College Guide about the broader issue of what presidents can and cannot actually do about college costs.

He notes the obvious federal role in helping students pay for higher costs, and also Obama’s veiled threats (particularly in the State of the Union Address) to act against colleges that are excessively boosting tuitions. But the real problem is in state legislatures, which are cutting support for public institutions and forcing them to rely more on student and family resources:

About 80 percent of American college students attend public colleges. State support for public colleges and universities has fallen by about 26 percent per full-time student. That’s the real problem here. There’s not much the federal government can do to get state funding back up.

Well, there was this idea of providing states with general and specific fiscal support from the federal government through “stimulus” legislation, but that was so 2009.

In a separate post, Daniel reports that Mitt Romney has split with congressional Republicans (who are sort of up in the air on the subject) and is agreeing with Obama’s demand that Congress extend the student loan interest rate cut enacted in 2007, which is due to expire at the end of the year. Romney will not, however, back away from the student aid cuts included in the sainted Paul Ryan’s budget, and is on record expressing less than great concern about how students pay for college.

Having just sunnily predicted the demise of officially sanctioned discrimination against LGBT folk, I feel obligated to report that one near-term test of sentiment could not only turn out badly, but has already caused Barack Obama to continue his dance on marriage equality, on which he has described his views as “evolving.”

I’m speaking of the vote in North Carolina two weeks from today on Amendment One, a constitutional amendment that would not only ban same-sex marriage but civil unions as well, along with any other explicit protections for people in same-sex relationships. It’s a ballot initiative that would have made the late Sen. Jesse Helms very proud.

As you probably know, North Carolina was narrowly won by Obama in 2008, and a win here this year would go a very long way towards ensuring (or at least reflecting) his re-election. That makes Amendment One a dicey proposition for Obama. So it wasn’t shocking that in an appearance in Chapel Hill today, the president did not mention Amendment One (he gave a sharply-worded speech on the student loan interest rate extension on which he is struggling with congressional Republicans, a natural topic given the campus audience).

Still, as Amy Gardner reported at WaPo today, a campus audience would have also been an appropriate venue to talk about Amendment One:

“The ‘evolving’ position does frustrate people, especially young people, because it’s such a no-brainer to us,” said Jeff DeLuca, 21, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill and another organizer against Amendment One. “When it’s all said and done, young people are going to vote this down 70-30. There is just a very strong generation gap.”

More to the point, Amendment One opponents point to a new PPP survey showing that support for the initiative drops significantly once voters understand it’s not a simple “gay marriage ban,” but arguably the most sweeping prohibition on support for same-sex relationships in the country. What better way to educate the public on the actual language of the ballot measure than via the bully pulpit of the presidency?

To be clear, Obama has officially stated his opposition to Amendment One, and for all I know opponents of the measure may have told the White House that talking about it today might be counter-productive. But if it passes narrowly, the speech might be viewed in retrospect as what one UNC told Gardner was “a lost opportunity.”

Obama’s dance on same-sex marriage, BTW, will face a more direct challenge later this year, thanks to the burgeoning movement to place an endorsement of marriage equality in the 2012 Democratic Platform. Having been involved a bit in the platform process in the recent past, I can assure you that nothing in that document appears that is not drafted and endorsed by the nominee’s staff. But if it is silent on the subject, it will definitely be noticed and criticized, at the precise time that the Obama campaign is trying to rev up the party base into a stretch-drive frenzy. So the debate will go on inside and beyond the White House.