By Backing a Gay Marriage Ban, Bush Keeps Faith With His Base

R. Toner

It is a cardinal rule of politics, all the more so for a president who saw his father defeated largely because he failed to heed it fully: Pay attention to the party's base.In recent weeks, on a variety of fronts, President Bush has done just that, trying to allay the concerns and stoke the spirits of his restive conservative base. His impassioned endorsement on Tuesday of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, after weeks of intensive lobbying by social conservatives, was the culmination of this rapprochement.But will he pay a price with the centrist voters who so often decide presidential elections, as the Democrats hope? Or is the country at such an ideologically polarized point that the middle simply matters less?Almost no one suggests that Mr. Bush is operating solely on the basis of political calculations. In his remarks on Tuesday, he emphasized that "an amendment to the Constitution is never to be undertaken lightly," and closed his remarks with a plea to "conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country, without bitterness or anger."But as David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, put it, "neither is it fair to say that the politics of it aren't important."