Although Shelby County Mayor A. C. Wharton, also a Democrat, was. So was Democratic Congressman Harold Ford (cite).
There’s almost certainly partisan politics going on here – President Bush is a partisan guy. But it doesn’t seem like there’s party partisan politics in this instance. Is there someone from Memphis and/or Louisville who knows local politics well enough to proffer alternatives? Maybe the shunned guys have spoken out against Social Security reform (which is the President’s primary agenda on this trip)? Were they particularly big Kerry fundraisers? Do they have upcoming opponents whose profile the President specifically wanted to raise (that appears to be a possibility in Louisville, for example)?
Did Mayor Abramson express this sentiment? If so then I, for one, would excuse Mr. Bush’s behavior. If not, this is just plain rude in my opinion. Mayor Abramson is a duly elected representative of the people of Louisville just as President Bush is a duly elected representative of the entire US. They should show each other respect and not shit all over each other.
[slight hijack]I for one am so tired of the current political climate. Was it always this nasty? Or has it only been at this level since the Clinton administration?[/hijack]
I have not been that up on KY politics since I went into exile in NC three years ago, and I never lived close enough to Louisville to have any local knowledge, except that Jerry Abramson has been mayor there ever since I’ve been even remotely politically aware.
But the tide has been turning recently in Kentucky. We used to be one of the last southern Democratic strongholds, but in recent years the Republicans have taken over the state legislature, we’ve elected our first Republican governor in my memory (who has been an unmitigated disaster), and we re-elected an incumbent Republican Senator who is demonstrably senile. (I say “we”, though this has all happened since I’ve been away.)
While this change is probably less evident in Louisville than in the rest of the state, I’m sure that Abramson’s challenger is going to try to ride it into a victory. It would be a big local victory for the GOP, and would help cement Kentucky in the R column, and that’s why I’m sure the President’s actions were very deliberate.
I take it you weren’t around during the Reagan administration? He was burned in effigy, for God’s sake. I was in college at the time, and if you said you were a Reagan supporter you could be guaranteed that some rightous person would tell you exactly what he thought of you. “Ronnie Raygun”, he was called. He was the guy who was going to throw poor people into the streets, help all the rich fatcats, and start WWIII. I can’t remember how many times I was shouted down by someone on campus for trying to express my opinion. The partisanship and hatred back then was every bit as bad as it is now. Perhaps worse. Here in Canada, we were boycotting U.S. ships from entering our ports, marching to prevent cruise missile testing in huge numbers, and it was fun to wear T-shirts depicting Reagan as a monstrous-looking cowboy in a 10-gallon hat with a missile in his fist.
You missed that those awful Democrats portrayed Abraham Lincoln as an ape.
For Pete’s sake, our present president is the poster boy for an agenda. That agenda involves the reestablishment of 19th Century economic and colonial policy. Never mind that those policies were long ago discredited. The President (and he is mine although I’m not too happy about it) is simply not going to do anything that doesn’t advance that agenda, even incrementally. Turning the whole social security road show into an exercise of preaching only to the choir and taking tea only with the converted is the way this thing is going to be played out.
The Pres will sup with his supporters, cold shoulder his opponents and let his henchmen do the dirty work like equating AARP with wishing the troops ill and advancing gay marriage and suggesting that social security discourages marriage and child rearing. This President plays hard ball and the little social gaff in Tennessee is just part of it.
The President is, after all, a good Christian. He is not required to observe the diplomatic niceties of federal-state relations when the agenda is at stake.
First, a correction. My reference to Alabama above should have been to Louisiana. I apologize for the error.
Second, man are you small-town guys ever small-town! Waah, the President didn’t say “Hi” to our mayor! WTF? You think people react like that in Chicago? After the recent merger with Jefferson County, Louisville is the 16th largest city in the nation (and is now apparently on a drive to become at least the 16th best city in the nation, a goal which apparently caused a minor semantic brouhaha involving the mayor). Here’s a starting hint: Grow up, y’all! On the upside, Mayor Abramson? In Louisville? I’d have lost that bet, so good on ya.
You know, I came into this thread for once prepared to defend Mr. Bush, because FDR used to do much the same thing – gladhand and appear with people whom he supported, while carefully avoiding those he opposed.
However, the above makes clear that at least a prominent Virginia Republican who has in the past been interested in governance, as opposed to politics, has now taken off the kid gloves and made it clear that Democrats and others who don’t meekly toe the line for Mr. Bush are, in his words, “irrelevant.”
Accordingly, I suggest that henceforth it be proper parlance on this board to refer to the incumbent as George W. Bush, President of the Republican Party. Because, while he was honoring political precedent today, his supporters are making it clear that he is not interested in the security and welfare of the American people, but in that subset of them who espouse his particular views.
WTF? Am I missing something? I read the article, It seems the mayor wanted to meet President Bush at the airport. The White House turns down his request but invites the mayor to the Kentucky Center where President Bush spoke. The mayor turned that down because he had a previously scheduled meeting. I’ll trust that was an very important meeting or maybe this just isn’t that big of a deal. When the President comes into New Orleans, as he has done several times, the mayor has not met him once at the airport. From what I can understand, getting on stage with him or being greeted in the speech is the big deal. If the mayor would have been snubbed at the center, that would be news, not this airport crap.
Well, Duh. You guys get important people visiting all the time. It’s a goddamn big deal to those of us in the hinterlands.
I actually think you’ve hit on a more important point than you realize, with your joke. Goofy and hickish as it sounds, many people find a presidential visit really validating of their hometown, their region. The visit of any important person, really.
Slight nitpick from a true political junkie: Republicans have taken over the Kentucky State Senate, but the Kentucky State House is still controlled by Democrats. I agree about Governor Fletcher; he’s a disaster. But he’s not more of a disaster than Senator Bunning. I swear, it was a sin that Mongiardo lost that race. Bunning is a disgrace. Fletcher would never have won the gubernatorial race if it weren’t for Patton’s sex scandal, though, and Patton would have gone on to lick Bunning in the Senate race last year. Ah, so much wasted potential…
As to the subject of the thread: yes, Bush is playing partisan politics. A true uniter would have met with the mayor, be he Democrat, Republican, Communist or Whig. As a Democratic aide was quoted saying in a recent issue of The New Republic: “[The Republicans] mean to wipe us out.” This sort of behavior is consistent with that. Maybe I’m just being paranoid—I certainly hope I am—but breaking with this tradition and cozying up to the local rival seems to be in step with the heightened partisanship on the part of Bush, if not in step with that greater anti-Democratic agenda that that aide suggested.
I was a teenager during the Reagan administration and while I did catch some of the spill over of the politics, I was not really paying attention. I started to pay attention during the first Bush administration but I really did not start understanding what was happening until Clinton.
[Philosophical Reverie… Please don’t get all partisan and jump all over me for this]
You know I find this really interesting: I thought (and still do think) that much of the Clinton scandal was a witch hunt. It was much ado about nothing… So what, he got a blow job, big deal, it’s none of our business. Nothing with whitewater was proven, and even if he was guilty, take a look at Silverado or the whole Iran-Contra thing. It’s not like the previous administrations or the other party is lily white. As far as lying, isn’t this a pre-requisite for the job? Don’t all presidents do this? From my 20-something (at that time) cynical perspective this was par for the course (I remember Reagan forgetting).
I think Clinton was an OK president. He certainly wasn’t a bad president in my opinion. He did some good stuff, he did some bad stuff. He definitely wasn’t All That though. The economy did well in spite of his policies (at least IMHO). As I said above, I only really became aware during his administration, so it is hard for me to determine what I can lay at his door. There are a lot of things that are messed up with this country, both domestically and internationally. Some things I think he made better, many things I think he made worse. I think that with all said and done, he did OK.
Bush has a lot of policies I don’t agree with (so what though, so did Clinton). Several things really get my goat. The closed door energy meetings. His courting of the religious right and (what I perceive as) the knocking down of the barriers between church and state. The patriot act, Ashcroft, and the erosion of civil liberties (Reno scared the crap out of me too for what it’s worth). His protection of and support for corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the common man (again, just MHO) while simultaneously borrowing and spending money like the word debt only applies to other people. And finally, inevitably, the Iraq war.
OK, I don’t agree with it, but I do understand the reasoning behind most of it. I’ve been a member (lurker) here too long to not understand why people do things, even when the reasons they say they are doing things don’t make sense or line up. I understand the reasoning behind many of these policies and I am beginning to see that the witch hunt after Clinton and the witch hunt after Bush are very similar (Thank you Bricker, et al. Ps, this is why I am pitting you; you encourged this thinking with your sound reasoning and the post above is sooo beneath you…).
I don’t like Bush, I didn’t vote for him and was active in the Kerry campaign. But the people who compare Dubya to a certain German leader (did I escape Godwin?) are smoking crack. Those who say that he is a fascist need to take a close look at Clinton (IMHO). Clinton was not a liberal and G. W. Bush is not a conservative. People are blinded by partisan politics and I don’t trust any of them (politicians that is)![/philosophical reverie]
Sounds like a perfectly reasonable position to me. I never bought into the Clinton hatred either. He’s the guy who reformed welfare, for God’s sake. Granted, it was the Republicans in Congress who pushed it, but ultimately Clinton signed on. Give the guy his due. To hear some Republicans tell it, Clinton was a socialist out to turn the U.S. into France or something. In reality, the guy was a center-left pragmatist who did a pretty good job.
As for the blowjob, I think they went after him for the same reason they went after Capone on tax evasion (not to equate Clinton in any way to Capone - I’m talking about the methods of his enemies). They were sure he was guilty over Whitewater, Hillary’s cattle futures, and other transgressions, but they could never make it stick. Too many records went missing, too many people ‘forgot’ what happened or took the fifth, and there was no hard evidence. So they got him on the blowjob. I’m not excusing it, I’m just explaining why I think many on the right got so unhinged over it.
For the record, I think Clinton was probably guilty of being corrupt when he was governor. Hillary’s cattle future deal was exactly the kind of technique used to slide bribes to politicians in an untraceable way (corrupt broker makes two offsetting transactions - whichever one works out goes into the politician’s account, and the bad one goes into the slush account, ensuring that the politician gets paid without any ‘dirty money’ possibly being traced back to him).
That said, it was a long time ago, people are innocent until proven guilty, no proof was forthcoming, and the Republicans should have let it go. Hell, there are lots of politicians in Washington with dirty pasts. People seem to have forgotten that John McCain was one of the Keating Five, as were John Glenn and Alan Cranston. Robert Byrd was a grand Kleagle n the Klan. So going after Clinton over some twenty year old real estate deal was, in my opinion, way over the top.
Similarly, Bush isn’t a white knight on a horse, or a demon out to ravage the poor and pay off his buddies. He’s a center-right idealist who is anything but a small government conservative. While he holds many conservative social positions due to his born-again religion, he’s also the guy who has increased the Dept. of Education’s budget by 40%, pledged 15 billion for AIDS in Africa, and presided over a huge expansion in non-defense discretionary spending. People rap him for not funding all stem cell research, but before Bush the govenrment didn’t fund ANY of it.
This behavior goes into the “it depends” category. Whether or not it was rude is irrelevant, politeness shouldn’t come into play as far as politics goes.
If this mayor was in a position where he had no challengers or anything then Bush should have met with him. Since a prominent Bush supporter (locally anyways) is planning on opposing the mayor in the next election it would be directly injurious to Mr. Downard to visit with the mayor, or to visit with both of them.
That’s the spoils of politics, and it’s supposed to trickly on down.
But was there the prohibition then? I honestly don’t know. I thought the real problem was not that there isn’t $$ dedicated to it, but that the prohibition meant that it’s hard for many labs to do research on stem cells outside of those approved, no matter how it’s paid for. So much lab infrastructure is funded by federal dollars, and the prohibition has been interpreted to mean you have to have a federal-fund-free lab in which to even touch the stuff. There are few of those out there.
If Mr. Bush failed to provide federal support for explosives screening in areas that did not support him, then your alarmist rhetoric might have some actual basis. Mr. Bush simply failed to provide a member of the opposing party a chance to make some political hay, while granting that opportunity to a member of his own party. This has NOTHING, ZIPPO, ZILCH, and ZERO to do with the “…security and welfare of the American people.” It has everything to do with the politicking process.
So, Polycarp - why did you say the “security and welfare of the American people” were affected here?
If your ridiculously broad and inaccurate statement was based on MY statement, not the mayoral meet-and-greet situation, then you misread it. It’s true that I said, as regards Bush opponents, “Your view was thus made irrelevant for the next four years.” BUT - I said that IMMEDIATELY following this line: “You don’t like Bush as President; you would have preferred the candidate the other major political party offered. But a majority of your countrymen did not agree - given that choice, they chose Mr. Bush.” The “view” I’m talking about is not a life-view, a security-view, a welfare-view… it’s the view they held that Bush should not be President. This does make them irrelevant in their entirety – it makes THAT VIEW, the idea that Bush should not be President 2005-2009, completely irrelevant.
The OP complains about Bush using his office to essentially campaign for a fellow GOPer at the expense of an entrenched, incumbent Democrat. That’s not wrong – that’s what Presidents do. But because the President is Bush, because Bush “shouldn’t EVER have been re-elected,” there’s open season to criticize him on moves like this.
That’s what’s irrelevant. No one said that 48% of the voters were irrelevant on all issues for the next four years. But any person that proceeds under the assumption that Bush’s shouldn’t have been re-elected – THAT VIEW is irrelevant.