David Axelrod Explains Why Barack Obama Flip-Flopped on Gay Marriage for 2008 Presidential Election in New Book 'Believer: My Forty Years in Politics'

Barack Obama misled the nation when he claimed to oppose same-sex marriage in the 2008 presidential campaign, his longtime adviser David Axelrod writes in a new book.

According to the New York Post, while the then-Illinois senator favored the unions all along, Obama gave in to advisers telling him to change his public position so as to avoid antagonizing a key constituency, Axelrod claims in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics."

"Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, (Obama) grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a 'sacred union,'" Axelrod explains in the book.

Nevertheless, the then-presidential candidate, who had voiced his support for gay marriage in a 2006 questionnaire, repeatedly tripped over the issue on the campaign trail, Axelrod says.

"I'm just not very good at bullsh*tting," Axelrod claims Obama told him, according to TIME.

The University of Chicago graduate writes that Obama never warmed to his imposed gay-marriage position.

"Having prided himself on forthrightness ... Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position," Axelrod writes. "He routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews."

The account gives insights into "Obama's long-established flip-flop, one of the blemishes on his record as a progressive" but may also tarnish the president's promise of a new kind of politics that allegedly is less susceptible to changing political winds, according to TIME.

Axelrod, who had served as a top political adviser to Former President Bill Clinton, was Obama's chief campaign counselor during the 2008 presidential race.

As president, Obama famously said he was "evolving" on the issue, the New York Post reports. After Vice President Joe Biden announced he was a supporter, Obama eventually followed suit.

The White House had no immediate comment on Axelrod's revelations.