Campaign '04: How The Wedge Issues Cut

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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 fiancé. 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.