It's foreign policy, and family-friendly

It's a bow to the women, and perhaps even late recognition of a fact that every woman knows, that women are fundamentally interested in the same issues men are. It's just that women interpret and respond to issues differently. What woman wouldn't be interested in terror, and how to eliminate the men (and women) who threaten murder and mayhem on her children and the children of other women the world over?

This was dramatically illustrated on one of the cable-TV "spin shows" following the first presidential debate, when the host asked Art Torres, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, whether he thought the president's repeated emphasis on keeping America safe from terrorists would reassure women voters.

"I think women are interested most in keeping the government out of their bodies," he replied, and glanced hopefully at the woman on the panel, as if he expected a pat on the head for his "correct" answer. All he got was a sigh and a frown.

George W. Bush and the Republicans, having seen previous campaigns wind up in the ditch called Gender Gap, finally get it. This year the reliable Republican issues, like tax cuts and national security, are couched in terms that fall comfortably on feminine ears. Tax cuts, for example, are presented as balm for the irritants not just of small-business enterprises, but to woman-owned small-business enterprises. Laura Bush, in her speech to the Republican National Convention, promised that help was on the way to small-business owners like Carmella Chaifos, "the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa."

The president similarly put the war on terror in family-friendly terms. "Sept. 11 changed how America must look at the world," he said. "My opponent talks about weapons inspectors. The facts are that Saddam Hussein was systematically deceiving the inspectors. That's the kind of a pre-Sept. 11 mentality, to hope that somehow resolutions and failed inspections would make this world a more peaceful place."

You don't have to be a woman to understand the bright blue logic of that.