IT ISN'T ALWAYS EASY doing everything for political gain. Sometimes you miscalculate, and then you cause a rupture. There are two things you do when this happens. Backtrack, and hide. In Pres. Bush's case, these two strategies work out like so:

• When two issues involving human life come up more or less at the same time, make a federal case out of the one that resonates most with your Christian conservative base. Ignore the issue (a school shooting that involves a demographic group -- 5,000 Chippewa/Ojibwa living on a reservation in Minnesota -- that doesn't vote for your party, has no political importance, and hence is of no concern to you.
• When, much to your surprise, polls show that the vast majority of Americans (including most evangelical Christians and conservative Christians) strongly disapprove of your administration's intervention in a private family matter, fly back to your ranch vacation (which you left a week earlier to sign that bill authorizing federal review of state court decisions on said private family matter), stop making any statements at all about that brain-dead woman in Florida, and use your weekly radio speech to, one, extend your sincere sympathies to the Native American victims of that school shooting in Minnesota; and two, confirm your strong belief in a "culture that affirms life."