It seemed like only a week ago that the White House was really concerned with gay marriage and anxious to tout the merits of a constitutional amendment. Oh wait, it was only a week ago.
Bush said “decisive…action is needed.” He spoke of “serious consequences” without an amendment. He said marriage “requires” an amendment. He said this was a matter of “national importance.”
And now he’s likely to say almost nothing else about it for a long while.
As the New York Times reported today:
White House officials say that Mr. Bush will not speak out about the amendment banning gay marriage in his political trips around the country and will leave his five-minute Roosevelt Room announcement as his major show on the issue.
[…]
While Mr. Bush’s closest advisers say that he genuinely feels that marriage is between a man and a woman only — the same position that Senators John Kerry and John Edwards take — some of his advisers also say the president would have been better off keeping his opinions to himself.
The Times’ Elisabeth Bumiller was a little vague in identifying these Bush “advisers,” but the fact remains that the crux of the article — Bush publicly endorsed the FMA but is unlikely to talk about it in the coming months — seems right.
What’s far less clear, at this point, is how Bush will walk this political tightrope and whether his supporters will accept his relative reticence.
In some ways, this is the worst of all worlds for Bush to be in. The White House was under intense pressure from its religious right base to endorse the FMA, which they desperately want to see ratified and on the 2004 national agenda. Libertarian-style Republicans and the congressional GOP, meanwhile, are in no hurry to act on this amendment, considering it a relatively low priority.
If the Times article is accurate, Bush’s strategy is effectively to endorse it (making the religious right happy) and then ignore it (making everyone else happy). I don’t think this will work in either case.
First, the religious right, as a political movement, has proven itself incredibly difficult to please. If Bush abandons the FMA, inasmuch as he fails to make it a central part of his campaign message, expect to hear plenty of grumbling and complaints from Gary Bauer and his cohorts. Endorsing the amendment just won’t be enough, these guys want a more thorough commitment. Rhetoric is only a first step.
Secondly, and somewhat conversely, it’s too late for Bush to say he doesn’t care about the constitutional amendment and that he’s really a “uniter.” His support for the FMA was a huge development and will reverberate for months. Whether Bush makes it a center point of 2004 is beside the point; it’s already become a dominating issue, whether he pushes it or not.
The damage is already done. Andrew Sullivan, for example, is a conservative political writer who has voiced consistent support for Bush for four years. Sullivan is also gay. After Bush’s announcement last week, Sullivan said Bush has “launched a war…against the civil rights of gay citizens and their families. And just as importantly, he launched a war to defile the most sacred document in the land.” Sullivan added:
We must oppose this extremism with everything we can muster. We must appeal to the fair-minded center of the country that balks at the hatred and fear that much of the religious right feeds on. We must prevent this graffiti from being written on a document every person in this country should be able to regard as their own. This struggle is hard but it is also easy. The president has made it easy. He’s a simple man and he divides the world into friends and foes. He has now made a whole group of Americans — and their families and their friends — his enemy. We have no alternative but to defend ourselves and our families from this attack. And we will.
Will Sullivan, and others like him, re-embrace Bush if the White House disregards the FMA from here on out? I sincerely doubt it. This was the most dramatic slap in the face possible. Letting the issue slide on the president’s agenda won’t rebuild a burnt bridge.
And so I’m left to believe that Bush won’t win with this strategy and was mistaken to endorse the FMA in the first place. If Bush shows indifference towards the amendment, the religious right won’t be satisfied. If he pursues it aggressively, he’ll alienate moderates and the GOP’s libertarian wing. Worst of all, Bush has tied his White House to an amendment that will fail in Congress, offering the president a defeat in an election year on a national controversy (that he helped create).
Sounds like a lose-lose-lose proposition.