Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)
Greg Abbott is not a dumb guy. But sometimes a politician should put aside the political calculations and answer questions from directly from the heart. What a novel concept!
The San Antonio Express-News’ editorial board asked a seductively simple question that Abbott easily could have disarmed. The question was whether he would have defended a state ban against interracial marriage.
The intent of the question was to contrast his answer with his view that, as attorney general, he is obligated to defend all state laws, the line that he has used to justify his defense of Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage.
Rather than say “no I would not defend a ban on interracial marriage,” he slipped into an accurate, but weak response: “And all I can do is deal with the issues that are before me… the job of attorney general is to represent and defend in court the laws of their client, which is the state Legislature, unless and until, a court strikes it down.”
As a result, the headlines today are all about how Abbott has wavered on interracial marriage. Really? And Zac Petkanas from Wendy Davis’ camp has jumped all over the answer, all but suggesting Abbott backs separate water fountains.
“In the year 2014, it’s inconceivable Greg Abbott is refusing to say whether he would not defend a ban on interracial marriage.”
I’ve taken Abbott to task for his defense of the same-sex ban and the prime reason cited in court filings — the supposed state interest in procreation. Regardless of his personal thoughts, the procreation argument is just amazingly weak.
Abbott is not the only candidate to get trapped while trying to play the percentages. The same hypothetical question to Wisconsin attorney general candidate Brad Schimel also caused a misstep. He initially claimed he would have defended such a ban in the 1950s and would defend a gay-marriage ban today. When controversy erupted, Schimel revised his answer.
In Kentucky, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell, created two weeks of pundit chatter when she refused to say whether she voted for Barack Obama. Instead, she described herself as a Hillary Clinton supporter and retreated into some lame answer about the sanctity of the ballot box.
Word to the wise: The simple answer is the right answer.