Show me a man who takes a Texas vacation in August, and
                  I'll show you a politician or a fool.
                      George II says he plans to spend much of the month
                  communing with beef cattle. Give me a break. Cowboy hat
                  and all, Bush's idyll at his recently acquired ranch in
                  Crawford, Texas, constitutes a purer form of play-acting than
                  did any of the poll-tested Clinton vacations.
                      Rich Texans buy ranches for the same reasons rich New
                  Yorkers buy Park Avenue condos and donate to art museums:
                  to consolidate their social status and advertise their sensibilities.
                      In Texas iconography, the Bush ranch symbolizes the rugged individualism
                  of the kind that people who inherit great wealth are eager to impersonate.
                  Previous to inheriting the White House, the smallest city George W. Bush
                  had occupied during his adult life was Midland, Texas, not exactly a country
                  town. He's no more a rancher than Bill Clinton's a duck hunter.
                      White House aides have also told reporters that Bush will be doing a lot
                  of deep thinking between photo-ops in sun-scorched pastures. Supposedly,
                  he'll be pondering the difficult ethical and moral implications of permitting
                  federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
                      Cynical me, I figure he'll be spending a lot more time trying to work his
                  way out of a political trap he set for himself. During the campaign, he won
                  the allegiance of the single-issue anti-abortion crowd by promising to prevent
                  such research from taking place. Now he's got a problem. Does he break a
                  campaign vow to the religious right or do something truly stupid?
                      Normally, Bush could be counted upon to tack rightward. But this issue is
                  complicated by several factors. First, stem cell research appears to offer the
                  greatest alleviation of human suffering since the discovery of antibiotics.
                  Treatment of diabetes, heart disease, spinal cord injuries, and Parkinson's
                  and Alzheimer's diseases could all be revolutionized. Second, the research is
                  going to be done in Europe regardless of what Bush decides. The potential
                  financial losses to the American pharmaceutical industry could be
                  incalculable; hence, many conservatives like Sen. Orrin Hatch are urging
                  Bush to alter his stance.
                      Pro-lifers, they've made a moral distinction between fetuses implanted in a
                  woman's womb and infinitesimally tiny frozen embryos in petri dishes that
                  were being routinely discarded in fertility clinics before science began probing
                  their mysteries and right-wing theologians turned them into a cause celebre.
                      Bush's dilemma was dramatized during his recent audience with the pope,
                  who publicly urged him to choose medieval doctrine over medical science.
                      Privately, George II must have fumed about getting sandbagged by the
                  pontiff. Well, if John Paul II is going to insert himself into American politics,
                  Bush ought to learn a bit of church history. The theological underpinning of
                  John Paul's argument on stem cell research is his predecessor Pope Paul
                  VI's 1968 encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae, a reassertion of the church's
                  ancient teaching that the only truly legitimate purpose of sex was procreation
                  and that birth control was akin to infanticide.
                      Until Humanae Vitae, many priests had been counseling Catholic couples
                  that as the Holy Father was all but certain to modify the church's historic
                  ban, they might in good conscience limit the size of their families without
                  committing a mortal sin. When Paul instead tried to turn the clock back to
                  the 14th century, as British novelist David Lodge put it, "Catholics convinced
                  of the morality of contraception were no longer disposed to swallow meekly
                  a rehash of discredited doctrine just because the Pope was wielding the spoon."
                      Indeed, given overpopulation and poverty in Third World Catholic
                  countries, many thought Humanae Vitae not merely silly, but morally obtuse.
                      After the democratizing reforms of Vatican II, the result wasn't to reassert
                  papal authority over the intimate lives of educated Catholics, it was to
                  diminish it irreparably. Should Bush heed the pope on stem cell research, it's
                  apt to have a similar political effect upon American Catholics. Advisers who
                  say otherwise are talking to too many bishops and cardinals, too few voters.
 
                      Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National
                  Magazine Award.