Obama's Self-inflicted Wedge Strategy.

White House getting blowback from Gay Marriage announcement.

Barney Frank told the panel on ABC’s This Week that “I don’t think anyone’s vote was changed” when Barack Obama endorsed the legalization of same-sex marriage — but that might be too optimistic an analysis. The New York Times reports that the White House went on a charm offensive with leaders of faith organizations, including and perhaps especially African-American churches where opposition to gay marriage runs high. So far, the charm offensive has had mixed results:

About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself. He had struggled with the decision, he said, but had come to believe it was the right one.

The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the president’s stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his re-election. …

In the end, Mr. Coates, who supports civil marriages for gay men and lesbians, said that most of the pastors, regardless of their views on this issue, agreed to “work aggressively” on behalf of the president’s campaign. But not everyone. “Gay marriage is contrary to their understanding of Scripture,” Mr. Coates said. “There are people who are really wrestling with this.”

This was the danger of going on the record, a danger Obama’s allies on the Left apparently discounted. Obama drove turnout in 2008 in part through the enthusiastic participation of these very same churches. Having now sided with the people who call these black pastors and congregations “bigots,” especially in North Carolina where two-thirds of black voters supported Amendment One, Obama is not at risk of having them flip to Mitt Romney — but he does risk losing that enthusiasm, fundraising, and organization.

It’s not just about the policy itself, either. The churches now wonder whether Obama will back efforts to force churches to perform same-sex marriages, a topic which one religious leader broached with the President during one of the calls:

“Some of the faith communities are going to be afraid that this is an attack against religious liberty,” Mr. Hunter remembered telling the president.

“Absolutely not,” Mr. Obama insisted. “That’s not where we’re going, and that’s not what I want.”

Really? The Obama administration’s track record on religious freedom singularly argues otherwise. Most recently, the White House stabbed their allies in health-care reform in the Catholic Church in the back by using the ObamaCare law that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops supported to create a mandate that requires church organizations to pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. Even more to the point, the Obama administration tried to apply the ADA to force a church to rehire a minister they’d terminated, an attempt that got a 9-0 rebuke from the Supreme Court.

The only time this President is solicitous of religious freedom and principles is when he’s trying to cover his own rear end.

It's enough to get you believing Victor Davis Hanson's prediction that Obama would suffer from the attention of the god Nemesis. As Hanson observes: "The Strange Thing About Nemesis is that the deity picks its victims on the basis of irony and arrogance."

Hanson comments on "Obama's Greek Tragedy."

The reality of Barack Obama is that he was an inexperienced community organizer with an undistinguished record as a Senate newcomer. A perfect storm of popular anger at eight years of George Bush, a lackluster John McCain campaign, Obama's landmark candidacy as an African-American, a disingenuous campaign promising centrist and bipartisan governance, and the financial meltdown in 2008 got the relatively untried and unknown Obama elected.

Most mortals in Obama's position would have treaded lightly. They would have kept promises, steered a moderate course and listened more than lectured until they won over the public with concrete achievement.

But headstrong tragic figures do not do that. They neither welcome in critics nor would listen to them if they did. They impute their unforeseen temporary success to their own brilliance -- and expect it to continue forever. So would-be gods set themselves up for a fall far harder than what happens to the rest of us.

That's about where we are now, with our president playing a character right out of Greek tragedy, who, true to form, is railing about the unfairness of it all.

The year started with Obama cynically attempting to split Catholics from their church over a distinctively Catholic moral issue. Five months into the year - the election year - his arrogance has led him to split himself from his base over a traditional moral issue.