Why Snub the NAACP?
Anything that hasn’t happened “since Herbert Hoover” is invariably something bad. As you are probably tired of hearing, George W. Bush may or may not become the first president since Hoover to suffer a net loss of jobs during his term.
His fate on that one is at the mercy of a highly fickle economy. But there is another not-since-Hoover situation that Bush is bringing down on himself. He has declined to speak at the NAACP’s annual convention, which starts Saturday. Unless he changes his mind, this will make Bush the first president since Hoover not to attend a single NAACP convention during his presidency.
Why on earth not? Bush’s decision to boycott the NAACP is inexplicable as a matter of presidential leadership. And it is just as inexplicable as a matter of low, self-interested politics. We would accuse him of ulterior motives, but it is hard to think of any.
As a candidate in 2000, Bush did go to the NAACP convention and made quite a point of it. “Our nation is harmed when we let our differences separate and divide us,” Bush declared. “So, while some in my party have avoided the NAACP, and while some in the NAACP have avoided my party, I am proud to be here today.”
Relations with the NAACP have not been terribly warm since Bush became president. Many African Americans feel that he has not followed through on his bring-us-together campaign rhetoric. At 10.1% in June, black unemployment is twice the rate among whites. And the Bush people may feel that their loving gestures of 2000 were unrequited. Bush got just 9% of the black vote in 2000 -- the worst showing by a Republican nominee since Barry Goldwater (another not-since that is rarely flattering).
Bush may well fear an unfriendly reception, like the jeers he got when laying a wreath at the grave of Martin Luther King Jr. earlier this year. But even an unfriendly reception, although unpleasant, would have its political pluses -- George W. in the lion’s den, and all that.
By contrast, there is no visible political plus to snubbing the nation’s leading African American organization. And -- looking for a moment beyond narrow politics -- honoring the NAACP with a visit is the right thing for the president, any president, to do.
When low politics and high principle both dictate the same result, there is a certain perverse grandeur in a politician choosing to do the opposite. But perverse grandeur has never seemed to be Bush’s thing. Not since Richard Nixon have a president’s motives been so hard to fathom.