George Bush: Back to The Party of Lincoln?

The most prominent black in the George Bush campaign was Willie Horton, the Massachusetts killer who raped a woman after he escaped from prison on a weekend furlough. The Bush camp relentlessly invoked Horton to portray Michael Dukakis as soft on crime -- but maybe also to make a not so subtle pitch to racial fears. In recent weeks, however, Bush has adroitly been mending fences. He moved quickly to meet with Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King and N.A.A.C.P. leader Benjamin Hooks. Jim Pinkerton, the director of policy development for the Bush transition team, promises, "The President-elect has a personal commitment to a new day in civil rights."

Bush moved in that direction last week when he named Congressman Jack Kemp to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Kemp has long sought to bring minorities into the G.O.P. by promoting economic opportunity in inner cities. But an unforeseen flap over abortion almost sabotaged Bush's most important gesture to blacks: the appointment of Dr. Louis W. Sullivan to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and the first black member of the new Cabinet.

The president of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Sullivan, 55, is a friend of George and Barbara Bush's. His appointment seemed assured until he told the Sunday Atlanta Journal and Constitution that he supported a woman's right to have an abortion, though he opposed federal funding for the procedure. Right-to-life activists were outraged. In a letter to the Atlanta newspaper, Sullivan sought to clarify -- or reverse -- his statements. "I am opposed to abortion," he wrote, "except in cases of rape, incest, and where the life of the mother is threatened." Yet in a second interview Sullivan compounded the problem by indicating that he would support Bush's antiabortion position at work but privately harbored a different view.

On Tuesday a press conference that was expected to feature the announcement of Sullivan's appointment was hastily canceled. Sullivan was summoned to Washington to meet with pro-life activists and congressional foes of abortion, including Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Vin Weber of Minnesota. During three hours of cordial but intense questioning, Sullivan insisted that he was solidly in their camp, at one point even calling abortion "murder."

Though Hatch and Weber said they were satisfied, militant pro-lifers remain opposed to the nomination. Nevertheless, it came on Thursday, when Bush announced Sullivan's appointment, along with that of New Mexico Congressman Manuel Lujan as Secretary of the Interior; Samuel K. Skinner, a former U.S. Attorney from Illinois, to be Secretary of Transportation; and former Congressman Ed Derwinski of Illinois to head the new Department of Veterans Affairs. Two days later, Bush added a woman to his Cabinet when he named Elizabeth Dole, who was Secretary of Transportation under Ronald Reagan and is the wife of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole, to be Secretary of Labor.