The latter distortion creeps its way into law, and the Bush administration hasn't evolved a strategy for coping with it. Senate majority leader Bill Frist has said that he would approve a constitutional amendment to define marriage in the traditional way, but Mr. Bush has not endorsed such an amendment. In the best of worlds he would not need to, confident that the states would continue to reflect public sentiment on the matter. But of course state legislatures are only in session as long as state courts permit. And the Supreme Court is hovering behind its high altar, waiting to pronounce the word of five justices. It would require argumentation no more devious than the ruling in the Lawrence case to declare that legal sanctions on marriage, narrowly specified as between man and woman, are a denial of equal protection under the law.
The attitude of Mr. Bush on the matter of the other two branches of government is remarkably compliant. He has not exercised the veto power once, matching the record of John Quincy Adams. The judiciary is apparently secure from his criticism. Supporters can say that he has worked hard for his judicial nominees, which is true. But what you must not bet the farm on is that nominees of Republican presidents are going to remain originalists on reaching the court. The constitutional massacre of Lawrence and the University of Michigan rulings would not have prevailed save for the affirmative votes of justices appointed by Reagan and Bush Sr.
All presidents, nearing voting time, tend to be dominated by the animal need for re-election. Mr. Bush has something to worry about here. His popularity rating in the polls seems to be going down about one-half point per U.S. soldier killed. Eighteen soldiers, nine points down, from 61 percent approval to 52 on his handling of the Iraq question. He will very much need the enthusiastic endorsement of conservatives who believe that a chief executive should be more assertive against lobbyist-dominated congressmen, and more alert to the co-optation of moral authority by the courts. There are plenty of reasons for conservatives to vote hopefully for Bush, but he has to remind them what those reasons are.