WASHINGTON — President Bush left many viewers mystified last week when, answering a question in his debate with Democratic challenger John F. Kerry, he invoked the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery.
The answer seemed to be reaching far back in history to answer the question about what kind of Supreme Court justice Bush would appoint. But to Christian conservatives who have long viewed the Scott decision as a parallel to the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling legalizing abortion, the president's historical reference was perfectly logical -- and his message was clear.
Bush, some felt, was giving a subtle nod to the belief of abortion foes, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, that just as the high court denied rights to blacks in the Scott case it also shirked the rights of the unborn in Roe, which many conservatives call the Dred Scott case of the modern era.
"It was a poignant moment, a very special gourmet, filet mignon dinner," said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a prominent conservative advocacy group based in Washington. "Everyone knows the Dred Scott decision and you don't have to stretch your mind at all. When he said that, it made it very clear that the '73 decision was faulty because what it said was that unborn persons in a legal sense have no civil rights."
Sheldon, who said he confers frequently with Bush and his senior campaign advisors on outreach to religious conservatives, though not in this instance, credited the use of Dred Scott with raising the abortion issue to "a very high level" and "back to the front burner."
"It didn't just slip out by accident," Sheldon said.
Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine University constitutional law professor who served as a lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, said the reference instantly struck him for its appeal to abortion opponents, advocates for judicial restraint and even civil rights advocates who regard the Scott case as the court's all-time worst moment.
"I thought it had so many constituencies that could applaud that comment; it was one of the most intelligent things that I heard in the debate," he said.
Bush's remark Friday came after a questioner in the St. Louis debate -- which occurred just miles from the courthouse where Scott filed his lawsuit seeking his freedom -- asked whom he might appoint to the court should there be a vacancy.
