It seemed like odd timing. The president, just two days before Iraqis go the polls and a day after he delivered his fourth major address on the war, traveled to suburban Virginia for a “roundtable discussion” with hand-picked, pre-screened seniors to talk about Medicare.
Of all the topics to schedule an event like this one, Medicare seemed out of place. The Patriot Act, maybe; the war, definitely. But why Medicare yesterday? As Dan Froomkin noticed, Bush’s roundtable discussion was less about where he was and more about where he wasn’t.
Reporting that President Bush steered clear of the White House’s own Conference on Aging yesterday — making him the first president ever to do so — fell to the regional newspapers and NPR, not the big guys.
It turns out that had Bush attended, he would have been facing a very hostile audience.
So instead, Bush held a photo-op with a hand-picked group of seniors at a swanky retirement home — and it was well covered by the usual suspects.
Indeed, NPR’s Julie Rovner reported that the White House Conference on Aging is a once-a-decade gathering and Bush is the first president not to speak to delegates in the event’s half-century history.
Did Bush decide to skip the event because the Conference on Aging planned to discuss issues unrelated to his policy agenda? No, the future of Medicare was at the top of the conference agenda, but the president felt he’d be better off talking to sycophantic seniors at a high-end, gated retirement community.
At a session on improving Medicare, Robert Binstock, professor of aging, health and society at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said, “That [Bush] went to speak about Medicare in Virginia today, instead of an assembly of delegates from all over the country indicates that he’s afraid to speak in anything but a controlled environment.”
If there’s another explanation, I’d love to hear it.