President Bush used the first veto of his presidency today to block federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. My best guess is that he decided he needed to appear to take a firm stand on something that his base cares about.
But this is the wishy-washiest stand ever.
This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others,” Bush, speaking at the White House, said after he followed through on his promise to veto the bill. “It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it.”
This particular moral boundary is in fact so important that we… we… we won’t give anyone federal funds for crossing it! That will keep our society decent!
Bush is trying to pretend that he’s so serious about this issue that he’s willing to bring out the big guns, but it seems to me that if he were really serious about the need to respect this moral boundary, he’d actually do something to prevent people from destroying embryos, not just continue to deny them federal research funding.
I personally am happy that he’s not that much of an extremist, but I wonder if his socially conservative base will notice that this isn’t exactly a brave or principled stance.