Quotes of the Day

On a campaign swing through the Midwest last month, John Kerry was looking for ways to show he wasn't the liberal wealthy elitist Republicans like to depict him as. He fired a gun on a shooting range, said that he thought life "began at conception" even though he is pro-choice, and told voters he shared their "conservative values." The last remark went too far for the Bush campaign. On a bus tour through West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio with Vice-President Cheney, campaign officials laughed as they read Kerry's statement to reporters and then quickly added some new lines to what Cheney calls "the good part" of his usually dry stump speech — when he cites various Kerry quotes and votes to label the Democrat as a waffler. Listing Kerry's votes against a late-term abortion ban, flag burning restrictions and low ratings among pro-gun groups, Cheney called Kerry "out of the mainstream and out of touch with the conservative values of the heartland."

Of course, no one is really sure exactly what the term "values" means in politics, as Kerry and Bush both say their campaign platforms represent the true values of Americans. Still, values matter to voters. In a TIME poll out this week, 18% those surveyed say the most important factor in their vote would be a candidate who "shares their values," compared to 11% concerned about health care. That makes the values debate crucial in this campaign. "Values are in some ways more important than the specific policies that you advocate," says a senior Kerry adviser. "A lot of people can't parse the policies, but if [they think] you represent and reflect their values, you're going to handle the details of the policy well."

In his stump speeches, Kerry talks about the values that guide his life: "family, faith, opportunity and responsibility." Bush has values too, including "courage, compassion, reverence and integrity," the words he repeats during almost every speech. All eight of these terms are the type of neutral, crowd-pleasing language that scores well in focus groups and polls of voters. "Reverence" and faith" express similar ideas, as do "integrity" and "responsibility."

At the same time, the terms illustrate some weaknesses of each party. Democrats are perceived to be a party that lacks religious "faith," which helps explain why Kerry, normally reticent to talk about his religion, quoted the Bible's commandment to "honor thy father and mother," and Lincoln's hope that "we are on God's side" during his speech at the Democratic National Convention. And Bush annoyed some Republicans in 2000 when he took on the campaign slogan of "compassionate conservative" to counter the perceptions that Republicans are plenty tough, but sometimes don't show enough love.

But these words also give a look into specific policies that might guide the candidates. Republicans have for years dominated the values debate through talking about religion, and that's true again this year. The "compassion" part of Bush's agenda includes increased funding for schools and HIV/AIDS prevention abroad, but also more than a $1 billion dollars to unleash what the President calls the "armies of compassion" — faith-based groups like churches that the administration has funded for after-school, drug rehab, and a variety of other programs. Kerry has suggested this money violates the separation of church and state.

For his part, Kerry's campaign hopes to reinvent how "values" are defined in campaigns, away from gay marriage and religion and more towards traditional Democratic ideas. Kerry's twin values of "responsibility" and "opportunity" are familiar concepts to Democrats; they're the exact same two words Bill Clinton chose in 1992 to frame his campaign. It's a way of telling the public that Democrats will increase "opportunity," through increased federal money in many social programs, but require "responsibility" in how its spent. Clinton, who ran with welfare reform as one of his campaign themes, actually spent more time on the responsibility part than Kerry, whose major ideas are increasing taxes on the wealthy to fund education and health care for 95% of Americans and tax incentives to create jobs.

While must of the debate is similar to 2000, two tricky values issue have emerged in this campaign. First, the decision of a Massachusetts court, along with several cities including San Francisco, to start allowing gay marriages, has put that issue on the table for both candidates. Bush publicly supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, which Kerry opposed. But both candidates are tiptoeing around the issue to fire up their partisans but not offend swing voters. The word "gay" followed directly by "marriage" will rarely come out of either candidate's mouth. Bush says he stands for "marriage and family" while attacking "activist judges." Kerry says that Republicans are trying to misuse for the Constitution for political purposes. Kerry is opposed to an amendment banning same-sex marriages, but supports some state regulations on gay marriage. He also supports civil unions, creating a rather tricky group of positions even his own daughter doesn't agree with. (Vanessa Kerry has expressed support for gay marriage) Bush, on other hand, while opposing both civil unions and gay marriage, must tread carefully in order to not seem intolerant of gays. His support of a federal gay marriage has run afoul with conservatives, including Cheney's wife Lynne, who thinks it should be a state issue.

This week, another potential values issue emerged as John Edwards attacked what he called the President's "ban" on embryonic stem cell research, which Laura Bush dismissed in a speech later that day. In a controversial decision in 2001, Bush said he would support federal funding for the research, which could help scientists discover treatments for many chronic illnesses, but only on existing embryonic lines. Bush argues creating new embryos for research processes amounts to the destruction of life. Kerry says he would support funding of research on cloned embryos, which would vastly increase the number of stem cell lines scientists could use. And with more than 60% of American supporting stem cell research, Kerry campaign officials feel they have found values issue they can take exploit, which is why Ron Reagan was invited to give a speech on the issue at the Democratic National Convention. At this point, Kerry and Bush are running even on "values" in polls, suggesting we'll be hearing that word a lot more the rest of the race.

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