Just two days after his inimitably voluble vice president kind of, sort of, probably came out in favor of same-sex marriage, and just a day after his education secretary expressed more succinct, unambiguous support for it, Barack Obama is scheduled to visit New York and cross paths with the governor who is arguably the Democratic standard-bearer for marriage equality, Andrew Cuomo.
And it will be clearer than ever: on this issue, the president isn’t leading. He’s following. And the gap by which he trails others in his party grows broader and sadder.

Maybe he’ll surprise us this week. I doubt it, for reasons that I’ll explain shortly — and that I mostly sympathize with.
But his timidity is being thrown into ever starker relief. Joe Biden’s comments on Sunday, while falling short of a clarion call for federal recognition of same-sex marriage, traveled several compassionate, justice-minded miles beyond anything the still-“evolving” president has said on the topic.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s remarks the next day on “Morning Joe” put him in the company of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, who spoke up unequivocally for marriage equality last November. Their position is shared by the former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. As mayor of Chicago, he has urged Illinois to permit same-sex marriages.
There’s also a greater and greater push — including an appeal on Monday from Caroline Kennedy, a co-chairwoman of Obama’s re-election campaign — for marriage equality to be included in the 2012 Democratic platform.

So why hasn’t Obama yielded to it? It’s possible, I suppose, that he has reservations of conscience, though his own words back in 1996, when he ran for the State Senate in Illinois, suggest otherwise. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,” he wrote in response to questions from a gay newspaper, “and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”
Since then he has apparently retreated, even as the nation has advanced. States as different as Iowa and New York have legalized same-sex marriage. A growing number of surveys over the last two years show that more Americans support marriage equality than oppose it.

But we’re not yet talking about a bounty of polls. We’re not yet talking about an impressive margin of difference. And national voter surveys don’t necessarily reflect the climate in given battleground states. So it’s impossible to assert that marriage equality is a prudent wager for a presidential candidate in 2012.

In 2016? For a Democrat, it most likely will be, and I assume that Cuomo and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a fellow champion of the issue and another of the party’s rising stars, have made that calculation.
But right now, Obama could stir up a lot of counterproductive noise and passion with an emphatic position in favor of marriage equality. And while it’s the job of advocates to focus on one issue and amass their armies on a single front, it’s the job of those who govern to promote an array of concerns and serve multiple constituencies. To do any good in office, you have to be in office.

Obama has exhibited more concern for the equal rights of gays and lesbians than his predecessors did. He ended the military policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He instructed the Justice Department not to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

He brags about this progress, and has a right to. But he shouldn’t expect those of us who support marriage equality to find the sound of that trumpeting so very musical. It’s a tentative, incremental bleat. And it’s especially unsatisfying from a president who’s such a moving, hopeful symbol of this country’s imperfect and incomplete journey toward full respect for all its citizens, no matter their gender, race, creed or sexual orientation.

On the day Biden spoke out, I happened to be reading “The Bridge,” David Remnick’s terrific biography of Obama. One of its compelling themes is Obama’s search as a young man of mixed race for a true sense of belonging in this country.
That’s what gay people want, and crucial to it are marriage laws that recognize our loving partnerships as no lesser than anybody else’s.

I think Obama gets that. And I think so in part because of what Biden, Duncan and Donovan have said. Were they nudged by a president trying to have it all ways? Impossible to know. But at least they felt comfortable making their statements. That says something.

And part of what it says is that Obama — no matter how much he romanticizes himself or some voters still romanticize him — plays a cautious game, letting others test the waters while he hugs the shore. It’s smart politics. But it’s hardly audacious, and not so inspiring.