Nate Silver compares Cuomo and Obama on gay marriage

Via Glen Greenwald's Twitter feed, a commentary by Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com) comparing Governor Andrew Cuomo's leadership on the gay marriage issue compared to President Obama's. The key message (emphasis mine):

It’s also a brand of leadership that many Democrats I speak with feel is lacking in President Obama.

Mr. Obama has some considerable achievements, including his health care bill and the reversal of the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers. But he often seems to achieve them by outsourcing much of the work to Democrats in Congress or to his various lieutenants. And his considerable speaking abilities sometimes seem to be directed more toward healing the country in times of crisis than toward persuading it to move in a new direction.

It’s a strategy that Mr. Obama’s critics and admirers have sometimes characterized as “leading from behind.” One could rightly argue that being president of the United States is an order of magnitude more difficult than being governor of New York, and that Mr. Obama’s performance has been fair to good under the circumstances. But his seemingly risk-averse approach roils many Democrats, even as most of them approve of his overall performance.