It was no secret inside the West Wing that Bill Daley, a Catholic with deep connections to the church hierarchy, vehemently opposed the administration?s proposal to require church-run hospitals and universities to give their employees free contraception.
But it was the way he pushed his case that aggravated some women on President Barack Obama?s senior staff, according to current and former administration officials. In early November, without consulting them, Daley set up a four-man Oval Office meeting for himself, Obama, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Vice President Joe Biden, who both shared the view that the policy would sink the president with Catholic voters.
Continue ReadingObama, a person close to him tells POLITICO, hadn?t made any final decision, hadn?t fully analyzed the dueling arguments, hadn?t expressed a strong policy preference, and felt ?mildly uncomfortable? being put on the spot.
On Jan. 20 ? after a protracted internal debate over the policy?s implications and lobbying from allies in the reproductive-rights community ? Obama approved the mandate, to the horror of the conservative Dolan and even to more liberal Catholic allies such as Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.
From the standpoint of the 2012 campaign, the debate over birth control, the stuff of the 1960s, has opened a dangerous electoral schism for Democrats, pitting Obama?s base of female supporters against the church and a GOP presidential field all too eager to seize on a perceived assault on religious liberty.
But it has also exposed surprisingly acute ideological, religious and gender divisions within a White House that prides itself on pulling together as a cohesive unit after a major decision, however sloppy the deliberation. And the fissures may have contributed to the slow, seemingly disorganized response to the escalating attacks, amplifying the damage from a fight that would have been politically perilous in any case.
Signaling a desire to move beyond the controversy, the White House will announce a compromise as early as Friday designed to allay the concerns of religious organization, a senior administration official told POLITICO.
The Dolan meeting is just one example of the administration?s fumbling of an incendiary issue dating to the summer of 2011.
The session broke up after less than an hour, and Obama made no commitment to Dolan, a barrel-chested eminence in dark clerical vestments. The president, in sphinx mode, said he?d seek an accommodation amenable to all parties. That left the politically savvy prelate feeling ?a little more at peace? about the outcome, which he duly reported to the media.
The benediction didn?t last long ? and Dolan?s modest expression of optimism did a lot of political damage to the Obama White House. The archbishop, messaging as masterfully as any Washington consultant, created the expectation that Obama was, more or less, on his side. And that allowed Dolan ? along with House Speaker John Boehner and GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich ? to cast the decision as a betrayal of Catholics.
?Think of this as Bill Daley?s parting gift to the White House,? a prominent abortion-rights activist who works closely with the administration told POLITICO.
Several of the president?s most influential female advisers ? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett among them ? were angry by what they viewed as a Daley power play and made their sentiment known to Obama, according to several people close the situation. Daley could not be reached for comment.
Yet casting the internal debate as a battle of the sexes doesn?t tell the whole story. Plenty of men in Obama?s orbit signed off, if not enthusiastically, on the decision. And at least one woman, Nancy-Ann DeParle, who helped quarterback the passage of the Affordable Care Act, opposed the policy. She argued that it would seriously undermine Catholic leaders who bucked the bishops by supporting the bill, including Sister Carol Keehan, head of the largest association of Catholic health-care centers.
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