In Speech to
N.A.A.C.P., Bush Offers Reconciliation
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Jamie Rose for The New York Times
President Bush was greeted Thursday by Julian Bond,
chairman of the N.A.A.C.P. and a sometime critic, before Mr. Bush’s
speech to the group |
By SHERYL GAY
STOLBERG, NYTimes on the Web, July 21, 2006
WASHINGTON, July 20 — In his
first speech to the N.A.A.C.P. since taking office in 2001, President Bush
acknowledged on Thursday that “many African-Americans distrust my party,” and
defended his record on domestic issues, including education, prescription drug
coverage and Hurricane Katrina.
“I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its
historic ties with the African-American community,” said Mr. Bush, whose
relations with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
have been so strained that, until Thursday, he was the first president since
Herbert Hoover to refuse to address the group. “For too long my party
wrote off the African-American vote, and many African-Americans wrote off the
Republican Party.”
Saying that “history has prevented us from working together when we agree on
great goals,” Mr. Bush said the goal should now be to transcend political
divisions.
“I want to change the relationship,” he said.
The 33-minute speech was an exercise in bridge-building, intended partly to
strengthen ties between Republicans and black voters and partly to reassure
moderate white voters with a message of reconciliation. Though Mr. Bush
received a standing ovation when he called on the Senate to renew the 1965
Voting Rights Act — it passed unanimously hours later — a somber silence fell
over the room as the president discussed his policies on education, jobs and
housing, which polls suggest are unpopular with blacks.
The president was booed when he raised the topic of charter schools and was also
interrupted by a heckler who shouted about the Middle East. Mr. Bush
ignored the outburst, forging ahead with his speech, though the ruckus when the
man was ejected briefly drowned him out.
Mr. Bush repeatedly referred to the group as the N-A-A-C-P, attracting some
notice from those who use the more traditional pronunciation of N-double-A-C-P.
Yet Mr. Bush did get some laughs. He opened the speech with a
well-received ice-breaker, referring to Bruce S. Gordon, the president of the
N.A.A.C.P., whose overtures to Mr. Bush ended the president’s no-show status.
In December, after Mr. Gordon met several times with Mr. Bush in the Oval
Office, the N.A.A.C.P. extended its customary speaking invitation to Mr. Bush,
and he accepted.
“Bruce is a polite guy,” Mr. Bush told the crowd after Mr. Gordon introduced
him. “I thought what he was going to say is, ‘It’s about time you showed
up.’ ”
Mr. Gordon later gave the speech a grade of B. Others were not so
generous.
Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, said Mr. Bush had “scored when
he said he looked forward to the Senate approving the Voting Rights Act.”
But Mr. Lewis said it would be difficult for blacks to overcome their anger over
the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, whose devastation
disproportionately affected them.
“People cannot forget Katrina,” Mr. Lewis said. “It’s going to take some
time.”
Another civil rights leader, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said he spoke to Mr. Bush
backstage after the speech and urged him to begin "a meaningful dialogue’’ with
a broader range of black organizations.
“He said, ‘Well, talk with Karl Rove,’ ’’ Mr. Jackson said, referring to Mr.
Bush’s chief political adviser.
Mr. Bush received 11 percent of the black vote in 2004, and his speech came
against the backdrop of concerted efforts by Republicans, notably Ken Mehlman,
the chairman of the Republican National Committee, to court black voters.
But Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, dismissed the suggestion that Mr. Bush
was engaging in partisan politics.
“The president has been walking the walk,” Mr. Snow said, adding, “This was not
an attempt to curry votes for the Republican Party.”
Nonetheless, the courtship could be especially important this November, when
Republicans are fielding black candidates for governor in Ohio and Pennsylvania
and for the Senate in Maryland.
Despite Mr. Mehlman’s earlier efforts, which included a 2004 apology for what he
described then as the racially polarized politics of some in his party, tensions
between the White House and the N.A.A.C.P. persisted until Mr. Gordon, a former
telecommunications executive, succeeded Kweisi Mfume as president in June 2005.
At that time, the organization, which must remain nonpartisan to keep its
tax-exempt status, was facing an Internal Revenue Service inquiry after its
chairman, Julian Bond, issued a harsh critique of the Bush administration.
So far, no action has been taken, a spokesman for the group said.
Mr. Bond, who stood on the dais with Mr. Bush Thursday, once likened the
president’s supporters to “the Taliban wing of American politics.” At the
height of the tensions, the president said his relationship with the N.A.A.C.P.
was “basically nonexistent.”
Time and again throughout his speech on Thursday, Mr. Bush returned to the theme
of moving beyond disagreements toward reconciliation. “We’ll work
together, and as we do so, you must understand I understand that racism still
lingers in America,” the president said.
But while many in the audience gave him credit for simply showing up, some were
skeptical. “He waited until the 11th hour of his presidency to come to us
with all of his great plans of working together,” said Kathy Sykes, secretary of
the N.A.A.C.P. chapter in Jackson, Miss., adding, “We recognize rhetoric when we
see it.”
Promoting what he views as his accomplishments, Mr. Bush said his administration
had committed more than $110 billion to help hurricane victims on the Gulf Coast
and increased financing for historically black universities by 30 percent.
He also said the federal government paid more than 95 percent of the cost of
prescription drugs for the nation’s poorest Medicare patients.
“Look, I understand that we had a political disagreement on the bill,” Mr. Bush
said, referring to legislation that provided the drug benefit, adding, “The day
is over of arguing about the bill.”
Mr. Bush also laced his speech with repeated personal references to prominent
blacks. As he reminded his audience of the brief visit he paid recently to
the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was
killed, he praised “the gentle wisdom” of his tour guide, Dr. Benjamin Hooks,
the former N.A.A.C.P. executive director, who was seated in the audience.
“It’s good to see you again, sir,” Mr. Bush said.
When he spoke about home ownership, Mr. Bush invoked Robert L. Johnson, the
founder of Black Entertainment Television, and the Rev. Anthony T. Evans, a
prominent African-American pastor in Dallas, calling both men his friends.
When he spoke about the Voting Rights Act, he gave a nod to the secretary of
state, saying, “Condi Rice understands what this has meant.”
One topic the president did not touch was the war in Iraq, an omission that Mr.
Lewis said left him surprised and disappointed, given that many blacks serve in
the military. The White House press secretary, Mr. Snow, said later that
Mr. Bush “had a pretty full plate just walking through domestic policy.”
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