Politics & Power Quote by Ken Mehlman

A masterclass in triangulation disguised as principle. Mehlman’s line is built to sound like democratic humility while doing the hard work of a culture-war wedge: define marriage narrowly, then launder that definition through “the people” so it reads as common sense rather than ideology. The key move is the double affirmation: the president “strongly believes” in heterosexual marriage, but also “believes” the question belongs to voters. It’s conviction with an escape hatch.

The subtext is less about marriage than about authority. By casting judges as actors who “impose their will,” the quote shifts the emotional target from gay couples to an allegedly arrogant elite. That’s savvy politics in the early 2000s, when same-sex marriage was moving through courts and state constitutions, and Republicans were betting that backlash could mobilize turnout. The language isn’t accidental: “ought” signals moral order, “decided by the people” invokes populist legitimacy, and “impose” frames constitutional adjudication as coercion rather than a check on majority power.

The rhetorical trick is that it treats rights as a preference to be voted up or down, while pretending the real issue is process. It’s a preemptive defense against accusations of discrimination: if the people decide, no one person is “to blame.” Yet the process argument only surfaces once the outcome becomes contested. In that way, the quote reveals its intent: lock in a traditional definition of marriage while delegitimizing the institution most likely to overturn it.