PHILADELPHIA -- Behind the unity lies The Whip, the other ''W'' dominating this Republican convention.
On public education, The Whip cracked, and all the delegates ran to the center. On abortion, The Whip didn't crack, and all the delegates ran to the right. On immigration, The Whip cracked, and all the delegates ran back to the center. On gay rights, The Whip didn't crack, and all the delegates ran to the right.
Even before he gets here, George W. Bush is demonstrating that happy, unified national conventions are not simply decreed. They happen because they are fine-tuned; they are less the result of power being exercised and more the result of a delicate balancing act.
If Bush is elected president, it will all hold together. If he loses, it will disintegrate in a flash.
But on closer examination, the moves the Bush campaign has made here demonstrate the nature of Bush's hold on the Republican Party, as well as the nature of its hold on him. The party has yielded to Bush on a good deal of domestic policy, but he has stayed true to the conservative faith on tax cutting and social policy. It isn't a formal pact but a tacit understanding, as the pre-convention maneuvering by the Bushies among the more ideological rank-and-file showed.
Education and immigration are core Bush concerns, both on the substance and as symbols that he really is a different kind of Republican. Not a Democrat, mind you, but he has departed from Reaganite dogma by supporting the US Education Department's continued existence as well as more money for its basic aid programs. He has also steered clear of the conservative movement for so-called school choice; his own proposal would provide vouchers only for the portion of school costs taken by federal aid (less than 10 percent), and would only go directly to parents of kids at a ''failing'' school after that school had ''failed'' for three years.
But despite Bush's well-known views, there was a serious effort to stiff him in the party's platform committee. The leader, Cheryl Williams of Oklahoma, asserted The Gipper's legacy, arguing that locally controlled education was a bedrock goal of ''our revolution'' and had been so for 20 years.
Left alone, the committee and the convention would have voted with her, but the Bush platform big shots, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee and Representative Sue Myrick of North Carolina, quickly mobilized committee members, a solid majority of whom were picked only after they pledged to follow campaign guidance. When The Whip cracked, it wasn't debating points that moved them to vote down a change, it was discipline.
On immigration, this is again a core Bush matter, in fact a good clue to his basic decency as a person. Unlike the party of four years ago - chastened by disaster in diverse California and no longer home to Pat Buchanan - this year's GOP is prepared to welcome legal immigrants in the Reagan spirit. The Bush platform draft did so, and it also dropped the '96 language calling for withdrawal of automatic citizenship rights for the children of illegals.
The one vestige of Anglo chauvinism remains language. Against Bush's wishes, they insisted on another in-your-face call for English to be officially recognized as the US tongue, but The Whip was cracked, and the word ''official'' was deleted from the exhortation.
The opposite happened on social issues. A reception for gay Republicans got token Bush recognition only - conservative talkmistress Mary Matalin. And The Whip never cracked when the delegates went to work on the Bush platform draft.
The center of public opinion has thankfully shifted in the last eight years, most notably leading to Bush's own support of President Clinton's ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy and Al Gore's forthright support of a complete end to official bigotry. But Bush did nothing here when his delegates insisted on declaring homosexuality ''incompatible'' with military service.
Worse was the passivity of the Bush campaign when they also insisted on denying sexual preference any legal protection or standing - an open invitation for employers and landlords to discriminate.
The Whip was also hidden while abortion rights were being shredded. The Bush acquiescence to the retention of the platform's Reagan era call for a no-exceptions Constitutional amendment and for the appointment of only right-to-life judges is well known. And his selection of running mate Dick Cheney underscores his hardline opposition to abortion rights.
The defeat of efforts by a small group of pro-choice GOP women was thus pre-ordained, but there was a revealing end to the ritual late Friday night. An astute move by pro-choicer Candy Stone of New Jersey forced two votes in committee, one to ''recognize and respect'' Republicans who disagree, the other to ''welcome'' those on all sides of the issue to the party.
Recognition and respect was of course voted down by the Bush forces. But in a confused moment the committee approved the welcome, 56-36. Suddenly horror swept the room as the Bushies realized their error. A second vote was quickly arranged, and by a show of hand the welcome was withdrawn in favor of the traditional, intentionally demeaning ''tolerance.''
Of course, platforms are nearly meaningless, but watching nominees micromanage them shows their priorities. The lesson this year is that Bush's domestic policy stands matter to him, but that he is willing to countenance antigay discrimination and to work to end abortion rights. Gentler perhaps, but not kinder.
Thomas Oliphant is a Globe columnist.
