Well, Bush proposes $1.5 billion for the 'promotion of marriage', as you will have seen if I'm not your first stop on the blogosphere. Amanda at Crescat thinks it's a collosal waste of money. Tyler Cowen wonders how conservatism has come to stand for subsidized marriage counseling. The sad thing is that Chris over at En Banc doesn't jump for joy, realizing the extent to which this means the battle for gay marriage is over. But I'll make that prediction, here and now: Bush won't back the Federal Marriage Amendment, and without that, it's a dead letter. This is another one of those battles that conservatives have lost, and unfortunately in the courts, not in the legislature.

Unlike many of his critics, I don't believe Bush is stupid, just as I didn't believe that Clinton was stupid. (Dishonest and not to be trusted around your daughter, maybe, but not stupid.) So far, Bush has been very successful at positioning himself with policies that, while ideologically impure, provide him with tactical advantage and increase his room for maneuver without causing ideological harm. Farm subsidies? They shore his electoral base and give his trade negotiators some serious leverage when asking Europe to reduce its Common Agricultural Policy. Steel tariffs? Again, help in West Virginia that anyone could see would be struck down by the WTO--and there they went. A drug benefit for Medicare? Sure, it's costly, but probably worth the price of stealing the issue from the Democrats for the upcoming election, possibly giving Bush a bigger Republican majority in Congress after 2004.

What does this have to do with $1.5 billion to promote marriage? There are serious policies which could promote marriage between couples in this country, and a thoughtful conservative might put them forward. (True, most of them are reforms which a thoughtful conservative would support at the state level, but one could put forward a 'marriage exemption' in the tax code or such.) All of these would cost more than $1.5 billion, the kind of money that, whatever Amanda may mourn, is lost in the rounding of Washington mathematics.

Sure, as Chris points out, the money won't go to homosexual couples, and I suppose we can get disheartened about that. But the only reason to put forth such a policy with so little effect is to defend your right flank when you know your left is about to capitulate utterly. My guess is that flight of several now-gutless Senators has not augured (haruspiced?) well for the passage of the FMA, and Bush and Rove know it. Hence, it's CYA time in the State of the Union.

I could be wrong. Bush may push the FMA in the State of the Union, call Congress to act, or even (this would be worth it just for the circus) call for the States to petition for a convention. But I doubt it.

As I've mentioned before, I support the FMA not because I have so much trouble with gay marriage, but because it might discourage future judicial activism. A firmer response from the executive or legislative to judicial encroachment on their perogatives would be nice. I'm a bit disheartened to this indicator that Bush isn't going to take a stand.