Just Like Nixon, Only He's a Sweetheart

Over the weekend, the NYTimes broke the story of a Bush family friend who made a series of tape recordings of W in the lead-up to his 2000 run for President. Doug Wead, a former religious advisor to the Bush family who is "well-connected in the evangelical community," secretly taped his telephone conversations with the then-Texas governor and used them for his new book. Wead claims he did it for "history" and not money and hopes the recordings put Bush in a positive light.

The Assembly of God minister previously worked for W's father, and he apparently left the White House in 1990 after a dispute in which "he sent conservatives a letter faulting the White House for inviting gay activists to an event." Given that background, the tapes have some interesting things to say about Bush's tolerance for gays and the delicate position that places him in with religious conservatives:

Early on, though, Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.

But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."

"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."

Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged not to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: "No, what I said was, I wouldn't fire gays."

As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention.

Well, there's a new slogan for the HRC: "It's bad for Republicans to be kicking gays!" Now, why can't Bush get the bigot brigade to listen?

The general impression left by the tapes is that Bush is well aware of the tightrope he must walk so that he neither pisses off his backers on the religious right nor alienates secular Americans. Moreover, it's Bush -- not just Karl Rove -- who was deeply involved in fine-tuning that strategery. Ultimately, the recordings help explain why Log Cabin types felt comfortable with W for so long, and why Bush's support for the Federal Marriage Amendment was treated as such a breach of trust.