Bush, in the State of the Union:
“I will work with members of Congress to find the most effective combination of reforms. I will listen to anyone who has a good idea to offer…. [W]e have to move ahead with courage and honesty, because our children’s retirement security is more important than partisan politics.”
Bush’s event on Social Security, less than 24 hours later:
Not everyone was welcome, apparently, at President Bush’s speech in North Dakota yesterday.
The Fargo Forum reported that a city commissioner, a liberal radio producer, a deputy Democratic campaign manager and a number of university professors were among more than 40 area residents who were barred from attending the Bush event. Their names were on a list supplied to workers at two ticket distribution sites.
The “Bush blacklist” is “frightening,” Tom Athans, chief executive of Democracy Radio, said after learning that a producer for the liberal “Ed Schultz Show” was among those barred. “To blacklist a local citizen because he produces a radio program at odds with the political agenda of the White House is dangerous for democracy.”
City Commissioner Linda Coates, whose husband was also on the list, told the newspaper that the list “is very revealing as to what this administration is all about.”
Maybe Bush assumed these North Dakotans didn’t have any good ideas to offer.