He Was A Joke

I have no clue why he chose to show up this year..

Bush hoped he could plagiarize himself to an audience he treated for 5 1/2 years as separate and forgotten. Until Thursday, he was the only sitting president since Warren G. Harding more than 80 years ago not to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Bush's top moment of success in that regard was when he said he would sign the extension of the Voting Rights Act. This was hardly courageous, as the Senate passed the extension 98 to 0 and the House passed it 390 to 33. More on Bush's mind was blunting visceral anger at his Iraq debacle and domestic policies that have many Republican members of Congress at risk in the mid-term elections.

Anger seethed beneath the politeness. While Bush received strong applause on the voting act and for understanding the distrust of black voters toward his party, silence grew as Bush retreated to well-worn, but ill-funded initiatives such as education. He received a smattering of boos for pushing charter schools.

Many people in the audience were acutely aware that Bush barely touched on the NAACP's core mission of equal rights. Bush failed to square his lament about African-Americans and Republicans when his own Justice Department deleted half of a massive report on racism among its attorneys, and his own Department of Health and Human Services attempted to delete all references to disparities and inequalities in healthcare. Bush did not mention why he backed white students at the University of Michigan who tried to kill affirmative action. He did not mention his Supreme Court and federal judicial appointees who oppose affirmative action and school busing.

His praise of the Voting Rights Act was, of course, the most ironic moment of his speech, considering how he gained the Oval Office with the massive disqualification of black ballots in Florida.