Politics, diplomacy, and Bush’s ‘defense-of-marriage’ pander

Today in the US Senate, senators voted down a proposal that President Bush had been pushing with surprising intensity over the past few days: an amendment to the US Constitution (no less!) that would have spelled out explicitly that marriage is “a union between a man and a woman.”
That the proposal was voted down was no surprise to anyone. So why had Bush made such a big deal of jumping in at a very late date to push this strongly anti-gay proposal, if he (and everyone else) knew it was headed to defeat anyway? Didn’t this risk making him look weak by having suddenly jumped in to push it?
Well the consensus among DC political analysts is that this was a pretty “desperate” attempt by the Prez to try to energize the rightwing evangelical Christian networks who have always been a strong basis of his political support around the country– and to do this at a crucial point in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.
But why did he suddenly need to energize these people right now— that is, over the past few days?
The WaPo’s Dana Milbank has an extremely amusing account of some of the more obviously “pander-y” aspects of what Bush was doing. It starts like this:

There’s violence in Iraq, corruption in the House and anxiety in the markets. Somebody needs to create a diversion.
“The gays are aggressive! Gays have called war! Gays are attacking traditional marriage!”
Bishop Harry Jackson was shouting these words outside the Capitol yesterday morning, at a rally for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
“Marriage is under attack!” cried out Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), also at the rally.
“We can have anarchy!” warned Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.).
No doubt Jackson, Allard and Harris are sincere in their views about marriage. But the urgency of their alarm is a bit suspect to anybody with an eye on the electoral calendar…

Go read the whole thing… Milbank really does have a great eye for political detail. I said it was an amusing account. At one level it is. At another I just hate the amount of hurt these virulent anti-gay campaigns and the anti-gay legal environment inflict on my many gay and lesbian friends.
Though I agree with the broad thrust of Milbank’s analysis there I do have an additional explanation for Bush’s sudden enthusiasm of the “defense of marriage” issue in these recent days. Remember that these exact same days have also seen his administration make a 180-degree turn in its policy toward Iran… This, on an issue in which the evangelical right and the Jewish-American right have both been extremely busy pushing a hardline agenda. (See a report of some of AIPAC’s recent belligerent urgings regarding Iran here.)
But what is notable to me right now is that though Bush seems to have felt a need to appease the evangelicals at the time he (effectively) turned his back on their longheld position regarding Iran, he has not– so far– felt the need to pander in any parallel way to the AIPAC crowd.
The experienced former Indian diplomat M.K. Badhrakumar, writing in Asia Times Online yesterday, reminded us that

hardly a fortnight has passed since Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, while visiting Washington, described the Iranian government as an existential threat.
At a joint press conference on the White House lawn on May 23 with President George W Bush, Olmert made a hard-hitting statement: “… The Iranian threat is not only a threat to Israel; it is a threat to the stability of the Middle East and the entire world. And it could mark the beginning of a dangerous and irresponsible arms race in the Middle East.”

And on May 24, Badhrakumar recalled, Olmert said this in his appearance at the US Congress:

” Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, and a notorious violator of fundamental human rights, stands on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. With these weapons, the security of the entire world is put in jeopardy … This challenge, which I believe is the test of our time, is one the West cannot afford to fail.
“The radical Iranian regime has declared the United States its enemy. Their president believes it is his religious duty and his destiny to lead his country in a violent conflict against the infidels. With pride he denies the Jewish Holocaust and speaks brazenly, calling to wipe Israel off the map. For us this is an existential threat, a threat to which we cannot consent. But it is not Israel’s threat alone. It is a threat to all those committed to stability in the Middle East and the well-being of the world at large.
“Our moment is now. History will judge our generation by the actions we take now, by our willingness to stand up …”

However, despite all of Olmert’s urgings Bush evidently made up his own mind regarding what to do about Iran. And Condi Rice then simply informed her Israeli counterpart, Tzipi Livni, of the decision. Once Bush’s new initiative had been announced in Washington, Livni could do little more than issue a statement saying, “Israel appreciates the steps and measures by the United States in continuing to lead the international coalition and in taking all necessary steps to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability.”
As for AIPAC, it issued a statement noting tersely that, ” AIPAC is not taking a position on dialog with Iran.”
It seems that what is happening is that the Bushites have understood– finally!– that the situation they face in Iraq (and Afghanistan, and Somalia, and in many other places too) is really perilous… And this time they have no choice but to act in the US national interest, in an attempt to tamp down US-Muslim tensions and do whatever is necessary to try to set the stage for some form of non-chaotic and sizeable drawdown of the US troop presence in Iraq.
If they want to do that, of course they need some level of cooperation from the Iranians… who not only abut huge lengths of the Persian/Arabian Gulf… who not only also abut huge lengths of the heavily-populated eastern portion of Iraq… who not only sit right acorss the river from the key logistic chokepoints in and around Basra… but who also have pervasive networks of agents throughout the whole of Iraq itself at this point.
The possibility that at this point in history, when the US government has 135,000 hostages to Iranian fortune deployed as sitting ducks inside Iraq, it might choose to escalate tensions with Iran or even launch some form of military adventure against it, would be quite beyond belief– even for the extremely risk-happy gang of men at the top of this US administration. (I think we have to give them some credit for having learned at least a few lessons as a result of the failure of their “big roll of the dice” in Iraq?)
The people running the Bush administration understand this situation… And so, at a different level, do most of the members of the US Congress– especially since all the emembers of the House of representatives and one-third of the members of the Senate are up for re-election just five months from now.
With the US casualty toll in Iraq now standing at 2,482 body-bags and tens of thousands of other very badly wounded soldiers and Marines, few if any US politicians want to be the ones standing up right now and urging the launching of yet another unnecessary military adventure.
So this is a decision-point when the preferences of AIPAC and its extensive networks become basically irrelevant. And anyway, neither Israel nor the AIPAC crowd particularly want to stick their heads out right now regarding the US-Iran overture. With the US public majorly embittered by the results of the Iraqi invasion and occupation so far, now is obviously not a good time for the pro-Israelis to arouse too much US public interest in the whole question of… h’mmm, how exactly did Washington get drawn into the invasion of Iraq, anyway?
This, because as Mearsheimer and Walt (and many others) have noted, the evangelical right and the pro-Israeli right were the two major political forces that prior to March 2003 were pushing for the invasion…
Meanwhile, back in the discussion of the gay-marriage issue here in the US, we see that these two important strands of the US political right now have noticeably divergent interests. Opposing gay marriage is a big, perhaps defining, issue for the evangelical right these days. But for the pro-Israeli crowd in the country, it’s something else they don’t really want to talk much about. Mainly because, within the Jewish community, it’s such a deeply divisive issue. Certainly, for them it is nowhere near being such a hugely important issue as it is for the rightwing evangelicals.
… Anyway, I think it’s been really interesting to note that, when Bush was forced by the logic of international affairs to turn his back majorly on the “let’s attack Iran” forces, he apparently felt he had to throw some bones of appeasement to the evangelical rightwingers among them. But, as noted above, he didn’t feel the same way about the pro-Israelis. (Of course, you could argue that just carrying on with US governmental business as usual with regard to Israel– that is, dolloping out huge amounts of money to it with absolutely no questions asked about its land-grabbing policies in the West Bank, its inhumane siege on many Palestinian communities, etc.– is already appeasing it far too much already. But that discussion is for another day…)