The Carter campaign, busy reaching out to Democratic interest groups from feminists to homosexuals to union members—and Playboy readers—took the evangelical vote for granted. The crisis exposed a political Achilles’ heel: Carter’s success so far had been built on seeming to be all things to all constituencies—constituencies often at war with one another. Now, for the first time, a bill for this ideological profligacy came due—and the Ford campaign spied opportunity. AT FIRST THE PRESIDENT,
