Bush Afraid to be Booed?
In an interesting article, Paul Duggan, a writer for the Washington Post, examines why President Bush has declined to attend Washington’s opening day for the 2nd straight year.
Throwing out the first pitch for the Washington franchise has been a Presdiential tradition since 1910, when President Taft through out the first pitch. (He was also the originator of the 7th inning stretch) In the 65 years (that Washington has had a franchise) since, only two presidents (except during World Wars) have missed two years in a row, Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. Wilson missed because he had had stroke.
Where is this President, who has spent an astounding amount of time on vacation? “He’s got various meetings during the day” and “a meeting earlier in the morning.” When asked whether he was afraid of being booed, his spokeswoman stated “No…certainly not.”
There are few greater American traditions than taking a sickie on Opening Day. Hundreds of thousands of people adjust their work and scholastic schedules to attend. It would be understandable if the President was off brokering a Middle East peace deal, garnering support for the “War on Terror,” or even having one of his officially staged and carefully multicultural Town Meetings. But no, he is at a meeting.
We here at Odds and Sods would never dream of displaying any semblance of political bias in our glorious webspace. I mean the president obviously has a great relationship with the city of Washington D.C. It’s not as though he ever, dispensed with the traiditional walk to the White House during the inauguration for fear of protestors, or tried to shirk the $40 million bill for his 2004 inauguration security on the city taxpayers.
And, of course, this could have nothing to do with the city having a 90% African-American population that would potentially boo him, because, of course, George Bush cares about black people. Look how responsive he was after Katrina!
