In gay-marriage stance, Bush tends to GOP
His focus shifts to core supporters
By Anne E. Kornblut and Lyle Denniston, Boston Globe Staff, 2/26/2004
WASHINGTON -- In declaring his support for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, President Bush followed a developing pattern in his campaign -- an emphasis on the "conservative" part of his message rather than the "compassionate" aspect he relied so heavily on in the 2000 race.
Bush advisers say that the decision about gay marriage was largely driven by current events and that he probably would have refrained from speaking out so soon if same-sex couples in San Francisco were not getting married and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wasn't forcing the Legislature to wrestle with the issue.
But in choosing to wade so deeply into the cultural divide, Bush also gave a nod to the more than 45 percent of Americans who were likely to vote for him anyway -- the same people in the evenly divided electorate to whom he reached out in his remarks before the Super Bowl last month, in his NASCAR visit in Florida, and in his expressing interest in seeing "The Passion of the Christ."
At this stage of seeking reelection, Bush is clearly focused more on Republicans than the narrow slice of the electorate that is up for grabs -- a distinct shift from his approach in 2000.
"You can spend a lot of time and money trying to appeal to that 10 percent of voters who are in the middle, or you can spend it on that 45 percent who are for my team, half of whom don't remember to vote," Grover Norquist, a political analyst and close White House ally, said. "The gay marriage issue doesn't really switch votes. It reminds his voters why they should remember to vote. This speaks to `the base.' "
In practical terms, Bush's stance toward gay marriage may not do much more than that.
History shows that presidents rarely influence the fate of constitutional-amendment proposals; the Constitution gives them no role in the process at all. It is also a lengthy ordeal that, in this case, will almost certainly last beyond the November elections.
As a result, it is relatively easy for Bush, like presidents in the past, to embrace the idea of a constitutional amendment during election season without having to follow up with any real time investment -- or suffer the blame if it passes or fails.
"Presidents really don't have much effect on the amending process," said Richard B. Bernstein, a constitutional historian who is a specialist on that process. "Most presidents play games with the process; it happened a lot in the 1980s and 1990s."
For example, Bernstein said, "Ronald Reagan talked a lot about a balanced-budget amendment, but he never fully committed to making it a reality. The same with [the first] President Bush; he never committed his political capital to that amendment."
Bush has expressed his desire to block attempts to legalize gay marriage for more than a year, and there is little doubt that Bush sincerely opposes an expansion of marriage beyond the union of a man and a woman.
Once the SJC decision came down, followed by the San Francisco mayor's issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples in violation of California law, Bush believed it was urgent for him to step in as a leader, advisers said. Apart from his own moral code, Bush also needed to assure his sometimes-restive conservative supporters, irritated by spiraling federal spending and a growing budget deficit, that he would be willing to take a stand on an issue as important as this. In so doing, he also erased the last grievance that social conservatives held against Bush.
The risk of inaction for Bush, according to Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, was that "when a cultural crisis unfolds without leadership, there becomes a fear that is immobilizing, and that would carry over into the election."
"That fear has turned into energy" among social conservatives, Perkins said.
"The only issue with the base -- the religious, conservative base -- was, `When is he going to make this announcement?' " said Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis magazine and an ally of the White House. "Now that it's been made, there aren't any other issues pressing."
At the same time, Hudson said, Bush is "doing something that makes his conservative base very happy, but it comes at the cost of potentially discouraging people in the party coalition who are afraid of this issue or disagree with it," such as moderates and gay Republicans.
Several of his political advisers believe strongly that it is just as important, if not more so, to appeal to the Republican base than to potential swing voters, who make up no more than 10 percent of the electorate, or as little as 4 percent.
Advisers also say his focus on Republicans is essential as a counterweight to energized Democrats and to begin rallying supporters to turn out and vote. Advisers say the key is to have more Republicans at the polls than Democrats, which alone would win the race for Bush regardless of how many independents or last-minute deciders there are.
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," one Bush adviser said of the president's decision to home in on conservatives at this stage of the campaign. As for moderates and swing voters, the adviser said, "There will be plenty of time for that."
In the past, presidents have had almost no impact on the constitutional-amendment process, which tends to be driven more by advocacy groups and members of Congress.
President Carter got some credit for embracing the Equal Rights Amendment, to give women full legal equality, which eventually failed. His role, however, was apparently not much greater than that of his wife, Rosalyn, who signed a resolution endorsing ERA's passage. "The impetus came more from the women's movement, working with their friends in Congress," not Carter, said Sylvia Law, a New York University professor of constitutional law.
Perhaps the only president to move an amendment forward was Abraham Lincoln, who led the way for the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. "He was really involved in getting it through Congress, really exerting pressure," noted Daniel Farber, a constitutional historian and law professor at Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California.
But even Lincoln was not involved in the process of drafting the changes, a measure of how unimportant a president's stamp of approval can be.
Anne Kornblut can be reached at akornblut@globe.com.
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