GEORGE W. BUSH expected to be asked about appointing anti-abortion judges at the first press conference of his presidential campaign on June 14. The night before, chief Bush strategist Karl Rove told at least one reporter that Bush was ready with an answer. No, he wouldn’t pick judges by the single standard of whether they oppose abortion and are ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. And that’s what Bush said when the first two questions were on exactly this subject. “There is no litmus test except for whether or not judges will strictly interpret the Constitution,” he declared. Bush and his advisers hoped this would take the wind out of the issue and end the media’s harping on abortion. It didn’t — quite the contrary.
Why didn’t it? The reason is Bush’s handling of abortion is too cute. He’s trying to square a circle by appealing to both sides of the abortion debate at the same time. Sure, he’s pro-life and always has been. He favors a constitutional amendment banning abortion in all cases except rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother. And just a week before the press conference, he had signed into law, as governor of Texas, a requirement that parents be notified if their teenage daughter is seeking an abortion. Substantively, this was a marginal gain for the pro-life cause. But politically and symbolically, it was important, and Bush had fought hard to achieve it.
The cuteness comes in when Bush explains his position. His aim is to hold onto anti-abortion voters while not alienating moderately pro-choice voters. (He has no illusions about winning over the unswerving, abortion-on-demand crowd.) Bush and his advisers think the issue is a minefield to be tiptoed through rather than one, like compassionate conservatism, on which Bush can make political headway. They regard abortion as an issue with potential only for harm. So he doesn’t bring up abortion on his own. It’s never mentioned, for instance, in his stump speech. When asked, however, he has two options. He can stress his opposition to abortion, the pro-life side. Or he can emphasize how magnanimous he is toward those who don’t agree with him. This is his non-dogmatic or pro-tolerance side. At the press conference, held in New Castle, New Hampshire, and attended by scores of reporters and 34 TV cameras, Bush tilted pro-tolerance. And he continued to do so in TV interviews.
There was a price to pay for this. First, it rejuvenated the campaigns of Bush’s conservative rivals in the GOP presidential race by giving them an issue on which to attack Bush and attract press attention. Gary Bauer, for example, had prompted the questions on abortion in the first place by challenging Bush to promise to appoint only judges who oppose abortion and, presumably, favor reversing Roe v. Wade. After the press conference, Bauer said Bush’s comments “represent an abject retreat in the 25-year fight to overturn Roe v. Wade.” Pat Buchanan said Bush’s stance was “grossly inadequate.” Dan Quayle insisted he would name pro-life judges. Steve Forbes said he’d pick judges who believe in “the sanctity of life.”
Worse, there were private complaints to the Bush campaign that he’d gone too far in appeasing pro-choice voters. This may have prompted the spin that Bush was victimized by an unfortunate choice of words: “no litmus test.” It’s true Bush repeated that phrase after a reporter used it in his question. And it’s also true that the phrase is deployed by liberals and the media against pro-life Republicans. (They never zing President Clinton for having an explicit litmus test in nominating only pro-Roe judges.) But “no litmus test” actually does reflect Bush’s position. “He doesn’t believe in litmus tests,” says an adviser. “He’s said that right along. He’s happy with that. It is the correct response.”
More aggravating to Bush, his handling of questions on abortion whetted the media’s appetite to ask him more, and it’s a subject he’s not eager to hold forth on. Not that the press needed much whetting. Bush got three questions on abortion last March after announcing his presidential exploratory committee, and Ron Fournier of the Associated Press followed up in an interview the next day with more questions. Reporters, of course, rarely badger Democrats on abortion. But they love going after Republicans who seem uncertain, conflicted, or uneasy in discussing the issue. Bush, for instance, is reluctant to state his view of Roe v. Wade. Last August, I asked him three times if he’d like to see Roe overturned. Each time, he was unresponsive, saying merely that it wouldn’t be reversed anytime soon. More often than not, Bush’s answers on abortion invite more questions.
Hours after the New Hampshire press conference, Carl Cameron of Fox News Channel inquired why Bush isn’t actively pushing for enactment of the constitutional amendment barring abortion. “There are not votes to pass a constitutional amendment,” Bush said. “You can push it, but it’s like pushing against a brick wall. I mean, America’s not ready for a constitutional amendment. . . . We can play like [the votes are] there, but they’re not there. One of these days hopefully it will happen. But I’ll lead, I’m a leader.”
Two things are wrong with his answer. Support for abortion is hardly a brick wall. In fact, opinion has shifted in the late 1990s toward the pro-life position. The pro-choice majority has vanished, dropping from 56 percent in 1996 to 48 percent now in a USA Today/CNN poll. Folks who identify themselves as pro-life rose from 36 percent to 42 percent. And Bush’s definition of leadership is painfully constricted. The greatest moments in politics come when leaders push against walls. This happened on civil rights, on welfare reform, on the Berlin Wall itself. Even his father, President Bush, pushed against a wall in assembling an international force against Iraq in 1991.
The day after the New Hampshire press conference, the matter of leadership arose again when Bush was asked by Candy Crowley of CNN about his refusal to support a litmus test. “My hopes are that every child, every unborn child is protected by law and welcomed to life,” he said. “And I believe that and I feel that strongly. I also recognize that I’m talking about an ideal world, and we don’t live in an ideal world right now. So in the meantime . . . we need a leader to bring people to understand the importance of banning partial-birth abortion, having parental-notification laws, not spending taxpayer money on abortion.” But no leadership is needed on these abortion-related issues. These are precisely the areas where the public is already overwhelmingly on board.
Bush aides claim they’re content to have Bush attacked by both pro-life absolutists and pro-abortion zealots. I doubt it. Bush doesn’t want abortion to be a high-visibility issue in the campaign, and the attacks tend to keep it visible. “It’s an important issue,” he told Candy Crowley. “There are a lot of important issues.” To make the issue recede, Bush would have to stop being cute. He won’t be taken seriously as a principled foe of abortion if he continues to imply he’ll do little to disturb the status quo. Better to make the case for a constitutional amendment than to endorse it and then declare it unattainable. The latter approach raises still another question for reporters to ask. Why doesn’t Bush have the courage of his pro-life convictions?
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
