Bush is also wrong to endorse his state's adoption of the 10 percent plan, since it was adopted mainly as a backdoor way to achieve a particular racial and ethnic mix in the state's public colleges, which is objectionable for the same reason that overt quotas are objectionable. But it is easy to miss the forest for the trees in this telling exchange. On the fundamental points, Bush is absolutely right and Gore is absolutely wrong. Indeed, the term's original, early 1960s meaning was aggressive, proactive discrimination, casting a wide recruitment net, and making clear to all applicants that they would be given an equal opportunity. And so Bush was quite right to make clear in his answer that he did not support this kind of affirmative action.
Preferential treatment is the only kind of affirmative action that anyone objects to.
It was also odd for Gore to bring the Supreme Court's decisions into this discussion. In the first place, the fact that the Court allows some affirmative action doesn't mean that it allows all affirmative action. And even if the Court has allowed some use of preferences, that doesn't mean that they are good policy. The law may allow something that is still objectionable, and the question put to the candidates was what policy they supported, not what the limits of the law allow. There was also great irony in Gore raising the Court's decisions, because it underscores another area in which his administration has demonstrated its contempt for the rule of law.