A nuanced look at Bush's social conservatism
The President Keeps His Distance
By Rich Lowry
Washington Post Op-Ed
Sunday, August 10, 2003; Page B01
The Christian right has infiltrated and taken over the White House -- in the person of the president of the United States. If Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had sat down 15 years ago and created the profile of their perfect president -- a born-again Christian from the Bible Belt, flagrantly open about his faith -- George W. Bush would fit it almost to a T. Yet he is not quite what anyone would have imagined.
All around Bush a culture war rages, but in it, he is at most a reluctant participant -- and perhaps a pacifist at heart.
A significant battle has begun over the status of homosexuality, with the Supreme Court striking down a Texas anti-sodomy law and the Massachusetts high court set to advance the cause of gay marriage in one form or another. Democrats are objecting to Bush's judicial nominees amid Republican charges that they are applying a standard that excludes Catholics faithful to the church's teaching on abortion from the federal bench. The culture war involves some of the most important social and political questions in American life: What is the meaning of sex? What is marriage? How should morality affect our laws?
Bush's posture on these issues is more complicated than his conservative Christian "profile" might suggest. Both conservatives and liberals should be able to find things to welcome in the non-stereotypical way Bush's faith affects his politics. For social conservatives, it could make for a new, more palatable version of Christian conservatism. For liberals, it sometimes might mean policies they can welcome, if they can see beyond their loathing of Bush's socio-political "type." But there is also a significant downside to Bush's soft touch on cultural and social issues -- a loss of opportunity for conservatives in particular, and an injury to American politics generally.
Bush is a polarizing figure in the culture war simply by virtue of who he is. He won the presidency in an election that illustrated the deep split in the country, between liberal "blue states" and conservative "red states." It's not just a partisan and geographic divide, but a difference in worldview and lifestyle. If you know whom Samantha bedded (and how) on "Sex & the City" last Sunday, you are blue-state. If you debate when to take your first buck in deer-hunting season, you are red-state. Bush is so red-state, he is practically a caricature.
The French sneer that Bush is all about "the Bible, baseball and barbecue." That's about right.
On Air Force One, he doesn't even want to see cable news shows on the TV. He prefers videotaped replays of Texas Rangers baseball games. He likes to relax by clearing brush on his Texas ranch in 90-degree heat. He prays often during the day, and his regime includes Bible reading and the daily devotional "My Utmost for His Highest," which is popular among evangelicals.
He fires an implicit shot in the culture war every time he drops a syllable or hooks his thumbs, cowboy-style, in his jeans. This helps account for why he is so hated by elements of the left, as hated as Bill Clinton was by some conservatives. When he says "bring 'em on" of anti-American fighters in Iraq, his macho challenge makes his critics crazy. It advertises Bush's identification with what they consider Backwater America, the Bible-believing, pickup-driving, NASCAR-loving, gun-toting part of the country.
But if liberals stopped being put off by Bush's style, they would find something to cheer in his Christian conservatism. Bush's faith is almost always wielded in support of the "compassionate" element of his "compassionate conservatism." This is true when he is urging tolerance for Muslims. Or comforting the stricken. Or explaining his global AIDS initiative. Or advancing the idea of universal human rights. This is the kind of Bible-thumping any bleeding heart should love.
His recent statement on gay marriage was characteristic. When conservatives talk about gay issues, their favorite trope is the Christian injunction to "hate the sin, but love the sinner" -- a condemnation of homosexuality, although one that attempts to be inoffensive. Bush took a different approach. "I am mindful that we're all sinners, and I caution those who may try to take the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their own," he said, paraphrasing a Bible passage. Bush invoked sin as a way of reproving his fellow conservatives, in a reminder that pride, too, is a sin. (Although some, admittedly, will object to the use of the word "sin" at all, especially in any proximity to a discussion touching on sex between consenting adults.)
This is a heartfelt sentiment for Bush. For him, we're all sinners -- but we're not in the hands of an angry God. Until age 40, he was a drinker and at loose ends. He might have met some sad fate if he hadn't -- to put his conversion in evangelical terms -- met Jesus Christ instead. That sense of redemption always bubbles just below the surface. Bush can't walk into an alcohol or drug clinic without misting up, feeling an instant connection with those still struggling with their addiction. Still fresh from his own lost years, he is loath to judge anyone else's sin, or doubt that they, too, may find grace.
Perhaps no other president has so freely spoken of love. Bush condemned "failures of love" in his inaugural address, and on the campaign trail he reminded conservative listeners that "it is our duty to love all the children." This makes for a kind of supercharged tolerance. It was more than just boilerplate when Bush said in his gay-marriage statement, "I think it's very important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts, to be a welcoming country."
What Reagan did for defense and economic conservatives, Bush may be doing for religious conservatives. Reagan believed everything Barry Goldwater believed, but gave it a sunnier, more optimistic tinge. Bush represents a similar makeover for the religious right, the same basic convictions but in a more palatable form. Bush is reliably pro-life, he's appointing conservative judges, and he supports the ban on human cloning -- but he doesn't seem angry or condemnatory.
All to the good. But there is a problem with Bush's approach. When he says he is a "uniter and not a divider," he is reflecting not just his beliefs and his temperament -- he fundamentally likes getting along with people -- but an electoral strategy. Part of the point of compassionate conservatism is to avoid inflaming the other side, to keep the Democratic base relatively quiet in a kind of soothing voter suppression. Consider a different social issue that illustrates the approach perfectly: racial preferences. Bush wants to split the difference so as not to offend either side too much. His administration's brief in the University of Michigan affirmative action cases was a ringing call for the Supreme Court to straddle the issue, to approve racial preferences as long as they aren't too overt. And so it did. Now, the last thing the White House wants is crusading conservative activist Ward Connerly going to the swing state of Michigan, as he is, with a ballot initiative asking voters to decide for themselves whether race should figure in college admissions and other government policies.
For all his bellicosity abroad, Bush's message at home often is: Please, let's not fight. That was the subliminal message in his 2000 pledge to "change the tone" in Washington. It was partly an anti-Clinton slogan, implicitly telling voters that he would make Washington less poisonous by having none of the personal scandals of President Clinton. But it was also an anti-anti-Clinton slogan, distancing him from Clinton's most vehement critics. Impeachment was a culmination of a battle in the culture war -- over the meaning of sex and truth -- and Bush made it clear he wanted nothing to do with it.
In this, Bush was playing to a laziness on the part of the public, an impatience with political argument. Whatever you made of Clinton's misconduct, it was worth arguing about and deciding what, if anything, was the appropriate punishment, instead of mindlessly "moving on."
In the same way, when Bush was asked about gay marriage, you got the feeling he would have preferred not to be asked at all. His statement against it was an assertion and expression of personal preference, that "somebody like me" believes "a marriage is between a man and a woman." Well, okay. But why? Explaining that requires argument, requires making moral distinctions among sex acts, in ways that are likely to make some people very angry. Requires, in short, everything Bush would rather not do -- because it probably feels too "judgmental" to him, because he (like most conservatives of his generation or younger) has openly gay friends, and because it will inflame voters both pro and con.
This is a loss for those of us who are conservatives. It means that, on important issues, a crucial player isn't fully engaged. Bush also has the power to make certain arguments out of bounds. Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum barely got Bush's seal of approval when he tried to make a -- muddled, admittedly, but reasonable -- case for the constitutionality of anti-sodomy laws. Consequently, few Republican politicians will attempt such a thing in the future. And Connerly's cause is hurt when a conservative White House treats him as if he has a social disease. More fundamentally, the effect of Bush's accommodationist tendencies on these issues is to leave them to the courts. If Michigan voters can't be bothered with the turmoil of voting on affirmative action, that means the issue is left to the whim of Sandra Day O'Connor. If it's too touchy to talk about sodomy laws (the White House studiously said nothing about the Texas case), only the Supreme Court gets to speak to it. The administration no doubt fervently hopes that the Massachusetts court pulls up shy of fully endorsing gay marriage, so it can avoid the expedient of endorsing a marriage amendment that would create a roiling national debate on what marriage means.
In this way, Bush contributes to an erosion of democratic government. The courts shouldn't be deciding cultural issues that are at the very heart of the nation's common life. Otherwise, what is self-government for? There's nothing wrong -- nothing hateful -- about open and passionate argument. Given the winning way his faith has influenced his political persona, President Bush is perfectly positioned to demonstrate this by example -- that we can fight, but still love, that a "welcoming country" need not forfeit its right to govern itself.
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