http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 32,00.html

The Sunday Times May 07, 2006


As time runs out, a kinder, gentler Bush emerges
Andrew Sullivan


Something a little embarrassing has been happening to George W Bush and Dick Cheney lately. They’ve been rumbled as closet softies. On two groups not exactly dear to the Republican base — illegal Hispanic immigrants and gay couples — the president and vice-president are quietly, privately tolerant, even sympathetic. And this news could prove devastating to their electoral fortunes.

The president, it turns out, loves Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal. As a resident, and subsequently governor, of Texas Bush had plenty of opportunity to witness the sacrifices and hardships some illegal Mexican migrants endure to grab onto the lowest rung of the American dream. He was also shrewd enough to realise that the Hispanic vote was going to explode in the years ahead and that the party they first identified with would do extremely well.

So Bush tried to meld a Hispanic base with his white, southern one. He did rather well for a while. One of his favourite campaign phrases was “Family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande”. He saw traditionalist, Catholic Latinos as a natural part of a socially conservative Republican party.

He has made good on his rhetoric, and is now backing a humane, comprehensive immigration bill in direct conflict with his own party’s base, which sees it as an amnesty for an illegal “invasion”. Bush has also talked the talk — literally. In New York City at the last Republican convention he rendered some of his acceptance speech in badly wrought Spanish.

Last Thursday he celebrated a memorable battle in Mexican history, the Cinco de Mayo, with his usual punctuality, a day early on May 4. He offered this up for good measure: “The ambassador de Mexico is with us today. Embajador, gracias, y tambien, mi amigo, the ambassador from the United States to Mexico, Antonio Garza.” In 2000 Bush even sang the Star-Spangled Banner in Spanish, according to reporter Kevin Phillips, an act his Republican base considers verging on treason.

Bush’s wife Laura is even more comfortable with the idea of America’s anthem being sung in a different tongue: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with singing it in Spanish. The point is it’s the United States’s national anthem. And what people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture. At the same time, we are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of many, many languages.” Suddenly the gap between the president and his supporters looked as wide and as arid as the Rio Grande itself.

On gay couples the contrast is just as striking. Bush and Cheney endorsed a draconian measure against gay couples a few years ago. They supported an amendment to the federal constitution that would strip all legal protections from gay couples, repeal any state’s marriage laws, and eviscerate any civil partnerships.

And yet Cheney’s own daughter Mary is openly lesbian and has a long-standing girlfriend, Heather Poe. I bumped into them both a week ago at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, and chatted amiably.

Mary has a book coming out. In it she tells how her gun-wielding, torture-approving, dark-side dad dealt with the revelation that his daughter was gay. He said, quite simply: “You’re my daughter, and I love you, and I just want you to be happy.”

He meant it; and they are, by all accounts, extremely close. For good measure Mary ran her father’s re-election campaign; and he was allowed to distance himself from the constitutional amendment in the campaign. And yet, at the same time he heads a party that would strip his daughter and her girlfriend of all legal rights.

Bush has had several gay friends in the past, and, according to them, has always been civil and open and accepting. In the 2000 election cycle a former aide, Doug Wead, secretly taped chats with Bush. On one occasion Bush was told he had to criticise gays as a way to curry favour with evangelicals. He retorted: “I’m not going to kick gays, because I’m a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?”

In Ronald Kessler’s new book on Laura Bush he recounts another incident when Bush invited his Yale classmates to their college reunion at the White House. One of his classmates was formerly Peter Akwai, a man who later had a sex change operation and became Leilani. When Akwai shook hands with the president, she said: “Hello, George, I guess the last time we spoke to each other, I was still living as a man.” Akwai described Bush’s response: “He grasped my hand firmly and said, ‘And now you’re you!’ ” Perfect.

What to make of this? On the one hand it’s good to know that these men are not personally bigoted or intolerant. On the other hand their alliance with elements that do consistently rail against illegal immigrants, Hispanics and gay people in ugly rhetorical broadsides is undeniable.

Does their personal tolerance make their policies less or more distasteful? I’d say more distasteful, since they know better. A man with a gay daughter in a loving relationship should not be campaigning on the idea that such relationships destroy the family. Whose family? Cheney’s?

To be fair the Bush-Cheney team has long been pro-immigrant; and their constitutional amendment on gay marriage has gone nowhere, although it’s being introduced into the Senate again next month. Their relationship with their own base is no more strained than that between, say, Tony Blair’s and his.

But in this there is also, perhaps, an emerging possibility. If the Democrats win back all or half the Congress this November Bush will have to deal with them. Can we say triangulation? He’ll have new allies to pass an immigration measure he can live with and take credit for; and more cover when the anti-gay forces recede.

We may get a kinder, gentler Bush yet. It’s there underneath. It’s just that it might take a Democratic Congress to bring it out of the closet.