The Bush wedge.

GEORGE W. BUSH has become a wedge issue.

Let me back up. As we all know, a "wedge issue" is a campaign topic that works well for Republicans and poorly for Democrats. Yeah, sure, liberals have different definitions. They claim a wedge issue is one that needlessly divides Americans, pitting them against one another instead of uniting them. According to this worldview, a political issue that distracts voters from their economic self-interest (i.e., welfare-state entitlements) or from some ill-defined "unity" is a wedge issue.

So, if a Republican brings up guns, gays, God, abortion, the death penalty, flag-burning, the war, etc., he is cynically dividing the American people. But when Democrats talk about, say, the need for gun control or abortion rights, they're addressing "real issues, facing real Americans."

Or consider Vietnam. For nearly six months, almost every sentence John Kerry has uttered--including "Do I have spinach stuck in my teeth?" and "Does this windsurfing wetsuit make me look fat?"--has ended with a lecture about how he served in Vietnam. In his more recent remarks, he has pointed out that the president and Dick Cheney did not serve in Vietnam, and that therefore they have no right to question his commitment to defense. But when anyone (including other Vietnam vets) mentions Kerry's role as a war protester and slanderer of American troops--never mind his two decades of relentless dovishness in the Senate--he is immediately accused of trying to "reopen the wounds of Vietnam" and thus "dividing" Americans.

Of course this is all of a piece with the mainstream press's version of the last few Republican presidential victories. Republicans win on "illegitimate" issues--welfare queens, the Pledge of Allegiance, prison furloughs, Al Gore's "exaggerations," etc., while those poor Democrats struggle to unify America. Every time, the media swear they won't let the Republicans get away with it again.

Which is what I mean when I say Bush himself is now a wedge issue: Because he divides people, he's illegitimate somehow. That's why we hear so much about Kerry's lead on "the issues," while Bush is ahead merely on the vague and mildly vulgar category of "leadership."

Indeed, the race among the media to reveal Bush & Co. as dividers-not-uniters is going so fast, facts themselves are barely speed bumps. One small example: Shortly after Arnold Schwarzenegger's convention speech, Dan Rather raced to pronounce that Arnold "slapped ... John Kerry around like a hockey puck." Yet Schwarzenegger never mentioned Kerry--not once.

Highbrow liberal journalists are so frustrated over Bush's successes that they've started lamenting the fact that Americans are too stupid to vote their class interests. Recent articles in The New Yorker and The American Prospect, and the new book What's the Matter with Kansas?, try to decipher why voters follow what one author calls "unenlightened self-interest" on such issues as, for example, the estate tax (two-thirds of Americans favor Bush's policy to repeal it, even though most will never directly benefit from it).

Of course, this is all hooey. In a democracy it is not the press's job to decide which issues or candidates are legitimate. The notion that only voting your class interest is "smart" is not just warmed-over Marxism--it denies the voter the opportunity to be guided by his principles. But most important is the fact that democracy is about disagreements, not agreements. Whenever I hear a liberal talk about the need for unity, what I hear is a liberal demanding unity around his proposals. Anything else is a "wedge issue."