Since the election, the talking heads have been buzzing with speculation on what the Christian vote for Bush means and what we Christians believe we can now expect for our efforts. What are our demands? they ask. Well, as usual, they?ve got it backwards.

Evangelicals and conservative Catholics who turned out in great numbers and voted their moral values were not doing so in order to ?get something? from the administration. Most were doing it because they?ve agreed with Bush for years and identify with who he is.

I discovered his keen interest in faith-based solutions when he was governor of Texas and gave us permission to open the first faith-based prison. He even dedicated it, singing ?Amazing Grace? with the inmates. Last Christmas, he and Mrs. Bush delivered Angel Tree gifts with us to kids in Alexandria, Virginia. The first week he was in office Bill Bennett and I went to the White House, urging him to do something about slavery inSudan. He acted swiftly and decisively. We talked to him about sexual trafficking, which the Clinton administration had refused to touch. He acted, and then he even addressed the United Nations on the subject. He gave a stirring speech to the American-Jewish Congress, strangely ignored by the press, affirming that human rights are God-given. And, at the urging of Franklin Graham and others, he took the lead in dealing with the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

We also have a consistent record from this president on appointing strict constructionist judges. And abortion: Jim Dobson and I were with him when he signed the partial-birth abortion ban. He came out strongly and clearly for marriage being an institution between one man and one woman, even when some on the White House staff counseled him not to.