The Trouble with Pleasing Everyone

By MARGARET CARLSON

George W. Bush is trying mightily not to lose votes on the fault line of abortion. He's building a really big tent, large enough to fit soccer moms and Christian activists comfortably inside. Several months ago, Bush said Roe v. Wade will not be overturned until hearts are changed and so we should focus on ways to reduce abortion. Last Monday he retreated further from the strict pro-life agenda, saying he would not insist on a "litmus test" for court nominees.

Bush will always call himself pro-life, but it looks as if he is going to fake right and move left (or is it the other way around?) in hopes that pro-choicers will think he's secretly their friend and would never ban abortion. If I had to guess, I would say he is either like his father, seemingly indifferent, or like his mother, seemingly pro-choice. But why should voters have to guess? If he really believes that every abortion is the taking of a human life, would he throw in the towel because not enough hearts agreed with him? Like most of us, Bush may well have a more nuanced position. But why risk revealing it when you can instead send a fuzzy message sufficient to keep voters confounded until the polls close? Actually, it's always tempting to fly below the radar, but this year the public is starved for candor, tired of the pointless manipulation former President Gerald Ford warned against two weeks ago: "Candidates without ideas hiring consultants without convictions to run campaigns without content."

Former Congressman Vin Weber, co-founder of Empower America, says "the old formulation is breaking down in this election, and Bush is testing a new one." The new formulation calls for soothing soccer moms by seeming to retreat from the official platform on abortion, while using religious testimony to quiet the Evangelicals. Bobbie Gobel, who as chair of Iowa's Christian Coalition controls the most sought-after endorsement in the state, concedes that Bush hasn't publicly toed the line on abortion but says she believes that as a "man of God" he will. To explain why she thinks this, she proceeds to tick off the various religious moments that have poured out of the Governor's office: Bush's walk on the beach in Kennebunkport, Me., with the Rev. Billy Graham, after which Bush recommitted his life to Jesus Christ; Barbara Bush's whispering to her son during a sermon on Moses' leading his people, "He's talking to you, George"; his praying with nearly all the ministers in Texas these past six months.

Let's stipulate that the "reinvigoration of his faith" is genuine--but it's also helpful in the here and now. Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed says, "His testimony of a profound faith experience does not act as a surrogate for being acceptable on the issue, but it does make it easier to give him the benefit of the doubt because he shares the grassroots faith and values."

With that benefit of the doubt, couldn't Bush take the risk of searching for a policy that can accommodate conflicting moral claims, so that we can stop thinking each other evil? During the perennial debate over partial-birth abortion, something important changed, but the extremists running the show were so dug in that they let the moment pass. For the first time in decades, pro-choicers (and the much desired soccer moms) were confronted with the statistics showing that late-term abortions weren't quite so rare or performed solely in grave circumstances and that the "health of mother" exception had expanded to include numerous gauzy psychological factors. The 1973 trimester construction of Roe v. Wade seemed at odds with what our eyes could see. Viability comes sooner now (a 1991 study found that 34% of babies delivered at 24 weeks can live). Perhaps the time was ripe to consider placing third-trimester restrictions on late-second-trimester abortions (not just partial-birth abortions). At the same time, some on the antiabortion side opened up to the notion that people every bit as moral as themselves might reasonably recoil at the idea that a five-weeks-pregnant 13-year old is carrying a child with rights equal to hers, "which cannot be infringed." Gobel says "a teenager old enough to fornicate is old enough to be a mother," but many others on her side can see that forcing a child to bear a child should not be the punishment for having sex.

Gobel has already prayed with Dan Quayle (whom she may endorse) and Steve Forbes, whom she won't (she doesn't buy his recent conversion or forgive his once calling Pat Robertson a "toothy flake"). She is waiting for Bush to come pray with her, which she expects within the next two weeks, before she makes up her mind. While Bush has so much of the country's attention, will he prove Ford wrong and lead us someplace instead of blowing $60 million on slick ads and a fog machine of road-tested, split-the-difference platitudes? He could lead, not follow, and woo the Christian right by bringing them along, not just kneeling down with them.