Essay 298

Interesting story from The New York Times…

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White House Door Opens for Some Black Critics

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 - Relations between President Bush and the N.A.A.C.P. have been rough from the moment Mr. Bush came to Washington. The civil rights organization was among his toughest critics, and Mr. Bush was the first president in 80 years to go a full term without once attending its annual convention.

But on Wednesday, the new president of the N.A.A.C.P., Bruce S. Gordon, and another prominent black leader - Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore’s campaign for president in 2000 against Mr. Bush - joined 30 people at the White House to talk with Mr. Bush about the rebuilding effort in New Orleans.

For Mr. Gordon, the meeting was the third with Mr. Bush in just three months, starting with a private one-on-one session in the Oval Office in September and then a smaller meeting with other black leaders earlier this month.

This emerging relationship between the president of the United States and the president of the N.A.A.C.P. signals that Mr. Bush is seeking a rapprochement with one of his more prominent critics at this troubled time for his administration, Republicans said.

But it also suggests that the White House has not abandoned its political goal of trying to draw black voters from Democratic ranks, notwithstanding what even some Republicans described as relations that had been nearly hopelessly damaged in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Bush’s refusal to deal with the N.A.A.C.P. and some other major black groups during his first term, because he was peeved at what he considered unfair criticism, has been a major element of contention, and several black leaders argued that it was something Mr. Bush needed to deal with. The effort was encouraged by Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state and the senior African-American in the administration, who Mr. Gordon said was the first administration official to call and congratulate him on his selection as N.A.A.C.P. president.

“It’s second term,” Mr. Gordon said in an interview, “and I got to think that at some point a president and anybody else who’s running out of time, they start to think about legacy. And nothing wrong with that. We’ll all do that at some point in time: How will I be remembered? And right now, he’s not going to be well remembered from the standpoint of how this administration has addressed our community, and so there’s an opportunity to get that right.”

“I think that you can’t be in the administration and not talk to the N.A.A.C.P.,” Mr. Gordon said.

Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman, who has made the recruitment of black support a hallmark of his tenure, said he did not believe that his party had suffered lasting damage among African-American voters because of Hurricane Katrina, though he acknowledged the importance of building a relationship between Mr. Bush and black leaders like Mr. Gordon that the president had previously ignored.

“The key going forward,” Mr. Mehlman said, “is to say, ‘Are we going to be able to work together and do folks recognize that not only is the party of Lincoln not well served when 90 percent vote for Democrats, but African-Americans are not served well either.’”

Part of this changed climate reflects what the White House sees as an opportunity provided by the new leadership of the N.A.A.C.P. Mr. Gordon is a product of the corporate world, and is, in demeanor and tenor, notably different from some of his harder-hitting predecessors, including Kweisi Mfume, a former member of Congress.

In interviews soon after taking office, Mr. Gordon signaled that he wanted to open up communications with the White House. He was soon invited to meet first with Ms. Rice and then with Mr. Bush.

He is not the only black leader who has found the door cracking open at the White House. The Dec. 7 meeting also included Representative Melvin Watt of North Carolina, who is the head of the Congressional Black Caucus, and William J. Shaw, the president of the National Baptist Convention, who said that until now, he had had virtually no dealings with this White House.

“Wisdom dictates it - politics dictates it,” Dr. Shaw said of Mr. Bush’s decision to sit down with some groups. “I would hope that this does represent a change. He needs to hear the voices that come from that community, and those voices are not always voices of support.”

Mr. Bush clearly seems to have built some good will with at least some of these leaders - in particular with Ms. Brazile, a Democratic consultant and frequent critic of Mr. Bush who is from New Orleans.

“I can’t sell his tax cuts, I can’t sell his war,” Ms. Brazile said. “But on Katrina, if I can establish assistance and help - I mean, forget partisanship, I can be partisan my whole life. This is where I’m from, this is family. And if I have access to the president of the United States and don’t take advantage of it. ...”

“I know some Democrats won’t agree with me,” Ms. Brazile said. “But then again, their families didn’t lose anything.”

She described Mr. Bush as very informed on what had taken place. “He gave me information. Like I didn’t know that prior to Katrina we may have had too many hospital beds instead of enough,” she said. “He put that information into my head.”

In interviews, black leaders declined to offer much speculation on the White House’s political motivation, saying they were grateful for an opportunity to make the case for help for New Orleans to an administration that has from the start seemed slow off the mark in responding.

Asked whether he though the White House was making a genuine effort to repair efforts with black leaders, Mr. Watt said: “I don’t know if it’s real or not. I do think it’s desirable. I don't know if it’s sincere. I haven’t seen anything in their policies that suggest that it is anything but a public relations move.”

Mr. Gordon noted that Mr. Mehlman constantly talked about trying “to create the party of Lincoln - that's his line.”

“He’s a very aggressive pitchman on that story,” Mr. Gordon said. “It’s a good pitch. Can this party be turned into the party of Lincoln? No time soon.”