The AARP will host its biggest, most well-attended national convention in the group’s history this year, and has extended invitations to both Bush and Kerry. Yet, even though Bush will be in the exact same city at the exact same time, the president won’t be stopping by.
President Bush and 25,000 AARP members will be in Las Vegas at the same time this week, but the Republican incumbent won’t drop in on the organization that gave a boost to last year’s Medicare prescription drug law.
The 35 million-member AARP invited Mr. Bush and Democratic rival Sen. John Kerry to speak at the Las Vegas meeting. Mr. Kerry, who opposed the Medicare law, is on Thursday morning’s schedule, AARP spokesman Steve Hahn said Tuesday.
The Bush campaign said it is dispatching first lady Laura Bush to the AARP meeting. The president had three previously scheduled events — all re-election rallies, said campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel. One of those rallies will be in Las Vegas.
Ed Coyle, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said public opinion polling shows the law is unpopular among older Americans. “No presidential candidate wants to risk being booed off stage by thousands of seniors. This drug benefit isn’t the victory for seniors the president plugs it to be and the president and his handlers know that to be true,” said Mr. Coyle, a critic of the law.
Bush probably expected to attend this event several months ago, when he thought he could take a victory lap to celebrate his Medicare scheme. Now, of course, seniors hate the plan and are turning against the president. So Bush is blowing off one of the nation’s biggest membership organizations and one of the strongest lobbying forces in DC, presumably because he can’t take the heat.
Kerry, meanwhile, is more than happy to attend.
But I think Bush’s choice of venues reflects an interesting part of his personality. Instead of speaking to the largest AARP gathering ever, he’ll talk to a carefully-assembled group of sycophants who cheer his every syllable. Likewise, Bush blew off the NAACP in the same fashion in July.
The president seems to realize that he’s incapable of persuading the unconvinced, so he’s decided he won’t try. Ever. Forget all that “uniter, not divider” stuff; it was empty rhetoric. He meant he would unite the conservative base and pretend everyone else doesn’t exist.
Bush believes — perhaps, correctly — that his base will be just big enough to carry him across the finish line. All he has to do is get them sufficiently motivated and the election will take care of itself. The irony is, the AARP has given Bush a real opportunity. Seniors are skeptical about his policies, but they’d surely listen to what the man has to say. Bush could defend his record and lay out a vision for the future, but he just doesn’t want to. He prefers a gathering where the toughest question he’ll hear is, “How do you maintain your youthful good looks?”
With the NAACP, it was a little easier to understand Bush’s strategy; African-American voters have never been a priority for this White House. But Bush is aware of the fact that senior citizens aren’t necessarily tied to either party and they vote in droves, right?