How The Wedge Issues Cut

In the summer of 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush was foundering. His opponent in the presidential race, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, was doing well in the polls. That fall, however, pro-Bush forces deftly used wedge issues—particularly crime and the specter of encroaching liberalism—to cleave white working-class voters from the Democratic Party. The nastiest and most effective '88 political ad featured the hardened visage of convict William Horton, a murderer who had fled Massachusetts during a prison furlough and then stabbed a man and raped his fiance. Republicans said Dukakis had turned his state's prison gates into "a revolving door." Dukakis pointed out that he had actually ended the furlough program, but his protest was late and languid. Bush won comfortably, 54% to 46%.

At the start of the 2004 campaign, it seemed that Bush the son would also use wedge issues to repel a Massachusetts rival. Earlier this year, just as John Kerry was celebrating primary victories, the top court in his home state affirmed a decision unpopular in most of the U.S. that legalized marriage for same-sex couples. The court ordered the state to begin issuing marriage licenses to gays by mid-May.

Social conservatives despaired at the ruling, but Republicans savored the idea that, all summer, newspapers would run pictures of men kissing each other on Cape Cod. It would help frame Kerry as a liberal.

Eager to energize evangelical Christians—4 million of whom White House adviser Karl Rove believes stayed home on Election Day 2000—George W. Bush said he would work to pass a U.S. constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. But as the race got under way, the Bush campaign had to decide whether to portray Kerry as a committed lefty or a squishy flip-flopper. Though both caricatures were used, the G.O.P. campaign focused far more on the question of whether Kerry could provide steady leadership in uncertain times. Saying that Kerry takes multiple positions has now made it harder to claim he's on the wrong side of wedge issues.

Voters are not convinced that he is on the wrong side. A new TIME poll, conducted after last week's third presidential debate (see chart, pages 36-37), suggests that wedge issues, which normally work to the Republicans' advantage, are not a big G.O.P. plus this time. Asked whom they trust to handle "moral-values issues such as gay marriage and abortion," more voters chose Bush (44%) than Kerry (42%), though the difference was within the margin for error. In early September the numbers were 51% to 37% in Bush's favor.

As we saw in the last debate, in Tempe, Ariz., Bush is fighting to reclaim the wedge. He called Kerry "a liberal Senator from Massachusetts" and conjured liberalism incarnate, senior Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy, three times. Bush brought up his own support for the anti-gay-marriage amendment and used the word marriage 11 times. He called "partial-birth" abortion "a brutal practice." For his part, Kerry turned in the most overtly religious presidential-debate performance—for either a Democrat or Republican—in memory. Although only a few months ago he was reluctant to discuss his faith—it's "personal" and "private," Kerry told TIME in March—he invoked the Almighty no fewer than 10 times in Tempe. Kerry is clearly hoping his faith can caulk any fractures the Republicans try to create with wedge issues over the next two weeks.

To be sure, most voters won't decide their vote based on social issues. According to the TIME poll, only 12% say values issues are paramount in this election. Even Bush-Cheney strategist Ralph Reed, who witnessed the potency of values politics as head of the Christian Coalition in the 1990s, says that this year "the overwhelming majority of voters are going to vote on jobs, the economy, Iraq, terrorism and health care."