Marriage Counselor

Most Americans oppose gay marriage but support civil rights and legal equality for gays, whereas the far right opposes even the latter. On many such issues President Bush has been able to placate conservatives without alienating mainstream voters, by wrapping conservative policies in moderate language—practicing, to use a term he made famous, "compassionate conservatism." Karl Rove, Bush's chief strategist, keeps a key lesson of the 1992 presidential campaign firmly in mind: when Republicans try to fuel the culture war, as Pat Buchanan did at that year's Republican convention, they generally provoke a backlash.

Now Bush faces the challenge of applying this lesson yet again. Until November, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in favor of legalizing gay marriage, Bush and his advisers had little reason to focus on the issue—but Matt Daniels, the head of a small (seven-person) public-policy group called the Alliance for Marriage, has been immersed in ...