I don't want to belabor the issue, but I do think the Miers nomination is an important conversation given the centrality of the abortion question to the moral anthropology's engagement with the political culture. Rick's thoughtful and appreciated response prompts a few additional thoughts and clarifications:
First, my cynicism toward the GOP's use of abortion is not meant to suggest that there was no meaningful difference represented in the choice between Kerry and Bush on "culture of life" issues. I'm a registered Democract, but could not pull the lever for Kerry given his longstanding lack of appreciation for the moral dimension of the abortion question. (Nor could I pull the lever for Bush, truth be told.)
Second, the list of pro-life actions taken by President Bush, while not to be minimized, share a common thread of not requiring much expenditure of political capital. If abortion is akin to slavery in being our generation's great moral struggle (a view held by a big chunk of Bush's religious base), doesn't the struggle require more? Can anyone imagine Lincoln saying that the subject of slavery never came up in any conversation with his closest legal aide?
Third, while Bush has been very careful not to call for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, he has consistently implored our nation to "set a great goal that unborn children should be welcomed in life and protected in law." If unborn children are going to be protected in law, from my understanding that will either require a constitutional amendment or the reversal of Roe v. Wade. President Bush, while not shy about pushing amendments on other divisive culture war issues that are doomed to fail, hasn't talked (to my knowledge) at all about an abortion amendment.
Finally -- and here is the crux of the matter, in my view -- I'm not sure that the political calculation undertaken by many Catholic and evangelical voters accurately reflects reality. Many of the Catholics and evangelicals I know who voted for Bush went through some sort of cost-benefit analysis: the cost of supporting Bush's policies on taxes (or the environment, war, etc.) were deemed to be outweighed by the benefit of supporting his policy on abortion. Sometimes the benefit side was supplemented with gay marriage, religious expression in public, or school choice, but abortion was always the dominant factor on the benefit side. And at least for my acquaintances, when they voted based on Bush's abortion stance, they weren't pinning their hopes on reinstatment of the Mexico City policy.
Rob
UPDATE: My colleague Elizabeth Brown informs me that:
Bush has spoken about a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, but he has not done so consistently. When he was first running for Congress in 1978, he didn’t support such an amendment on the grounds that the decision on whether to have an abortion should be left up to a woman and her doctor, although he was personally opposed to abortion. When he ran against Ann Richards in 1994 for Governor of Texas, he refused to discuss abortion and his campaign literature stated, “The United States has settled the abortion issue.” When running for President in 2000, he stated in his debates with John McCain that he supported the GOP platform, which advocated a constitutional amendment against abortion, although he would prefer that exceptions be made in case of rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. The GOP plank does not include those exceptions. He also indicated to the Economist that he would not work to get such an amendment passed. Given this history, it is not surprising that he is not interested in spending political capital on the abortion issue now, particularly when his political capital is at an all time low for his presidency. The majority of his actions on abortion either had bipartisan support or could be done unilaterally by him with little fanfare. For example, I doubt most Americans know what the Mexico City policy is.
Just a reminder: Professor Friedman's "Religion Clause" blog is an excellent resource for those hoping to keep up with church-state litigation and developments in our courts and around the world.
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
After noting that President Bush said that "of his recollection, he had never discussed abortion with [Miers]," my friend Rob writes, "apparently President Bush doesn't believe that abortion rights are one of the 'crucial issues' of the day." He also expresses regret that "President Bush's admission that the subject never even came up in his countless conversations with Miers."
As Rob knows, though, the political reality is that a (pro-life) President is required to say that he or she has no litmus tests, and that a nominee must be able to say that the President appointing him or her did not ask directly about the nominees views on abortion. (In the same press conference, by the way, where Bush stated that he had not discussed abortion with Miers, he said, "I made it very clear where I stand during the campaign; I'm a pro-life President.") It does not follow -- at all -- that "apparently President Bush does not believe that abortion rights are one of the 'crucial issues' of the day." It could just as easily be -- in fact, I am fairly confident that it is the case -- that Bush's frequent invocations of "strict construction" and "no legislating from the bench" are intended to serve, and are understood by all involved as serving, the function of (a) finding out (in a clumsy, coded way) the nominee's views on Roe v. Wade and its reversal, and (b) communicating the President's views on Roe v. Wade and its reversal.
It might also be useful to recall, in response to Rob's cynicism toward the GOP's use of abortion as election issue, the facts about Bush's pro-life record since his election in 2000 (the linked-to list is far too long to reproduce here). I would urge everyone -- particularly those inclined to think that, on the abortion issue, the Bush administration has not performed markedly different than the alternative administration would have -- to review the list. It is quite striking.
Now, I do not intend to revisit, in my blogging, the debate we had here in the Fall of 2004 about the election, about how Catholics may or should vote, about how we should weigh and balance all the competing issues. Nor do I intend, in my blogging, to defend or criticize the Miers nomination. I believe now, and I believed then, that reasonable people could and can disagree about this. I'm not telling people how to vote or whom to support. That said, I do not believe -- and I believe the linked-to list supports my view -- that it can plausibly be denied that the Bush Administration has, within the restraints imposed by the Court, done a great deal, and achieved a great deal of good, on the pro-life front. The "cynicism" charge is not, I think -- with all due respect to Rob -- supported by the weight of the evidence.
Rick
Mark Noll, leading American historian and evangelical Christian, gave this lecture, "The Bible in American Public Life, 1860-2005," in April at the Library of Congress. It's a rich account of how the Bible has been variously used in American history by some people at the top (Puritans, presidents) and some people who were or are at the margins (Catholics, Jews, African-Americans). It contains a wonderful reminder of how the Bible has inspired our greatest orations, from Lincoln's to King's, in both their sustance and their stirring cadences. The whole thing is very much worth reading, but here are Noll's concluding prescriptions for using the Bible in public life today:
Premise 1: [T]he Bible is true for all people in all times and in all places.
Premise 2: Therefore, the Bible can never be the possession of only one modern nation or of only one faction within a particular nation.
Premise 3: While everything in the Bible can be construed as political, politics can never exhaust, equal, or contain the message of the Bible.
Implication 1: American society would be immeasurably poorer if it was no longer possible to bring the universal message of Scripture to bear on the particulars of American public life as did Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr., with such memorable effect.
Implication 2: Narrow use of the Bible for partisan political advantage violates what the Bible itself says about the dignity of all human beings under God and also what it says about political power as a stewardship bestowed by God for the maintenance of order, the guarantee of justice, and the care of the powerless.
Implication 3: Given the current American situation, the only hope for using the Bible in public life that conforms to the Bible's own message is to employ it humbly, wisely, and on behalf of all people.
Tom
The editors and editorial-board members of First Things have launched a blog, "On the Square." As Andrew Sullivan once noted, Fr. Neuhaus might well have been, in a way, the first "blogger" with his "Public Square" musings and blog-type entries in the back of the magazine. (Neuhaus refuses the honor of the designation, however).
Rick
