Position on Demand

"One man with courage makes a majority," Andrew Jackson used to say. And while he said it to justify his own autocratic tendencies, it's still a sentiment George Bush and Bill Clinton should take to heart. If they don't, an election whose candidates so often criticize special interest politics will be driven in many ways by those very special interest concerns.

On most issues, both Bush and Clinton are unquestionably moderates within their own parties. Bush often tries to hide his moderation to appease his party's conservatives, while Clinton shows off his moderate views to symbolize his party's "revitalization." Indeed, excluding such anomalies as Sens. Barry M. Goldwater and George S. McGovern, the most radical positions are, in most years, thankfully not represented by either party.

Yet this year, the candidates have adopted extreme positions on abortion, positions that differ greatly from ones they have supported in the past. In fact, they have selected among the most radical positions from a wide spectrum of options.

Why do Bush and Clinton, two very middle-of-the road candidates, sound like hard-line party ideologues on the issue of abortion? The unfortunate answer is that neither has the political courage to be a real moderate. Rather than being a measure of the strength of their convictions, the candidates' positions are a measure of their weakness. Both men are political chameleons on abortion who have simply taken what they see as the politically expedient position--to the detriment of meaningful debate.

The fact that Bush and Clinton feel obliged to take these positions demonstrates the awesome power of special interest groups in politics today. Abortion activists in both parties have bullied their candidates into taking stands that make real progress on the abortion debate nearly impossible.

The official position of the Bush campaign is that Bush opposes abortion "except when the life of the mother is threatened or when rape or incest is involved." While not quite as inflexible as the Republican platform position, Bush has unmistakably placed himself on the right-wing of the abortion debate.

Bush also committed himself to the pro-life movement in a New York speech last month to a Catholic organization in which he said he would support the prolife position "no matter what the political cost." Yet there are many indications that Bush personally disagrees with what he now spouts publicly.

During his failed 1980 presidential campaign, Bush said unequivocally that he supported a woman's right to an abortion. When he joined the Reagan team, he took on the campaign's position, and he has been a more or less ardent pro-lifer ever since.

However, his real beliefs keep peeking through. His statement last summer that he would support a grand-child who sought an abortion and that in the end it was "her choice" could have been lifted from a pro-choice pamphlet. The Bush-Quayle campaign has also dispatched Barbara Bush to give her view on abortion (that it shouldn't be a political issue) in order to pacify some pro-choice Republicans. The Bushes aren't alone in their deviousness, though.

The Clinton campaign says the Arkansas governor supports the Freedom of Choice Act, which would make restricting abortion very difficult, and has made itself into the "pro-choice campaign." But Clinton is playing a political game as well.

According to a 1986 letter to a constituent reprinted recently in The New York Times, Clinton said, "I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortion." The 1989 review of state abortion policies by the National Abortion Rights Action League said that Clinton "refused to state a position on abortion." And that same year (the year before what was predicted to be a tough reelection fight), Clinton signed into law a bill requiring parental notification for abortion.

Then, in a process Clinton's aides call "evolution," the governor's position changed--most radically when he entered the race for the presidency. He now says he supports government funding for abortion through Medicare subsidies and opposes "any federal attempt to limit access to abortion through mandatory waiting periods or parental or spousal consent requirements."

Clinton has even gone so far as to admit that he would impose a litmus test on his Supreme Court nominees, something even Bush won't admit publicly.

That's an evolution Charles Darwin would be impressed with.

The effect of the decisions by Bush and Clinton is to hamper real debate on abortion. Little can be achieved when both sides are mouthing the inflexible slogans of the abortion extremists.

This kind of susceptibility of the two major parties to special interests like the hard-line pro-choice and pro-life movements lies at the root of much of the widespread dissatisfaction with the current party system.

The irony of these moves is that the great majority of voters are where Bush and Clinton aren't: in the middle.

David L. Bosco '95 is a contributing writer for the Opinion page. He really likes Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.