{"id":2104,"date":"2004-07-12T12:26:17","date_gmt":"2004-07-12T17:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2104.html"},"modified":"2004-07-12T12:26:17","modified_gmt":"2004-07-12T17:26:17","slug":"still-scratching-my-head-over-bushs-snub-of-the-naacp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/still-scratching-my-head-over-bushs-snub-of-the-naacp\/","title":{"rendered":"Still scratching my head over Bush’s snub of the NAACP"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t mean to belabor this point, but I’m still mystified by the White House’s decision to blow off the NAACP convention for the fourth straight year. It’s generating awful press for Bush and the explanations for the move sound ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Bear in mind, the White House initially said Bush wasn’t available<\/a> for the event.<\/p>\n

A White House spokeswoman said Bush had a scheduling conflict, but would not specify the conflict with the six-day convention, which is scheduled to open Saturday in Philadelphia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That turned out to be “inoperative” 24 hours later when Bush said he wasn’t attending because the big meanies at the NAACP hurt his feelings<\/a> four years ago.<\/p>\n

[Bush] castigated the group’s officers, who include President Kweisi Mfume and Chairman Julian Bond. “I would describe my relationship with the current leadership as basically nonexistent,” Bush said, as reported by Knight Ridder Newspapers. “You’ve heard the rhetoric and the names they’ve called me.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No wonder this guy is so bad at diplomacy; he has the temperament of a third grader.
\n
\nIt’s worth noting that over the weekend, the NAACP urged the president to reconsider<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP] asked Bush to change his mind and promised that the Republican president would be treated with respect at the Philadelphia event this week even if many delegates oppose his politics. <\/p>\n

A candidate who refuses to talk to any group risks losing votes in what is likely to be a tight presidential contest, Mfume said. <\/p>\n

More than 12 million black people are registered to vote, according to the NAACP. Most are Democrats. <\/p>\n

“I would ask the president to reconsider his unnecessarily harsh stance and to show America that he’s bigger than that,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush again refused, confirming that he is not “bigger than that.”<\/p>\n

I keep thinking about this incident in the context of Bush’s “united, not divider” pledge of four years ago. Bush put on a sincere face and emphasized his desire to bridge gaps and heal divisions. I always perceived it is empty campaign rhetoric, but the ploy was probably worth several points among moderate swing voters.<\/p>\n

And now that he believes the nation’s largest civil rights organization has been mean to him — in his words, they’ve called him “names” — Bush is satisfied being the first sitting president in 70 years to blow off the NAACP. If that makes him a divider, so be it. The big-bad group hurt his feelings.<\/p>\n

There’s just no rational explanation for this. Hell, if Bush wanted to reach out to NAACP members<\/i> while expressing his displeasure with the group’s leaders<\/i>, he could have gone to Philly and said so. Instead, he wanted to pout and criticize from afar. It’s hard to imagine a confident president who prefers bravado to negotiation could be so thin-skinned, yet here we are.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, NAACP leaders did what Bush probably expected: they criticized him relentlessly<\/a> over the weekend.<\/p>\n

NAACP chairman Julian Bond condemned Bush administration policies on education, the economy and the war in Iraq on Sunday, imploring members of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization to increase voter turnout to oust the president from office.<\/p>\n

“They preach racial neutrality and practice racial division,” Bond said Sunday night in the 95th annual convention’s keynote address. “They’ve tried to patch the leaky economy and every other domestic problem with duct tape and plastic sheets. They write a new constitution of Iraq and they ignore the Constitution here at home.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Would things have been less bitter had Bush offered the group some respect and shown face over the weekend? We’ll never know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t mean to belabor this point, but I’m still mystified by the White House’s decision to blow off the NAACP convention for the fourth straight year. It’s generating awful press for Bush and the explanations for the move sound ridiculous. Bear in mind, the White House initially said Bush wasn’t available for the event. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}