Mfume Says Bush Wants To Improve Low Standing With Blacks

By George E. CurryNNPA Editor-in-Chief WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Outgoing NAACP President Kweisi Mfume says President Bush is baffled over his inability to win broad support from African-Americans in last month’s presidential election and appears determined to improve poor standing in the Black community. Mfume, whose 9-year tenure with the NAACP culminates at the end of this week, met with Bush and his top political adviser, Karl Rove, for 45-minutes last week in the Oval Office. In an interview with the NNPA News Service that lasted as long as his meeting with Bush, the civil rights leader gave a detailed account of his White House meeting. It took place on the same day as an explosion at a U.S. base near Mosul killed 22 people, most of them Americans. “I said to him at the beginning of the meeting, ‘Look we can put this off and do it at a later time because this is urgent'” Mfume recalls. “He said, ‘I know. It’s distressing me, but I want to have this meeting and I want to have it today. So let’s go ahead.'” Mfume said he made it clear to Bush that their meeting was not a substitute for meeting with the leadership of the NAACP and that he saw it as a first step toward repairing the strained relationship between the president and the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization. Board Chair Julian Bond has been particularly acerbic in his attacks on Bush. In 2001, he accused Bush of representing the “Taliban” wing of the Republican Party and the following year, he accused Bush of peddling “snake oil.” Mfume’s meeting with Bush was in response to a letter he had sent to Bush after election seeking a meeting to set aside past differences. “The bulk of the conversation centered on race relations – where we are and where we aren’t and his belief that he has gone beyond other presidents of modern times or, for that matter, forever, in terms of the number of African-Americans and Latinos that are placed, not only in his cabinet but all the jobs below the cabinet level and that it’s kind of strange that that does not equate itself into a large vote on Election Day,” Mfume says. A USA Today story on Dec. 10 by Susan Page began, “With little fanfare and not much credit, President Bush has appointed a more diverse set of top advisers than any president in history. In his first term, Bush matched the record that President Clinton set in his first term for appointing women and people of color to the Cabinet, and Bush had a more diverse inner circle at the Whites House…” Buried deep in the story, however, was the acknowledgment that when Blacks are considered alone, the Bush record is worse than Clinton’s. The newspaper noted that over eight years, Clinton appointed seven African-Americans to his cabinet; Bush has appointed four. Of the four, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice were the first African-Americans to serve in those posts. Mfume says that’s beside the point. “My advice to him was, quite frankly, that it’s not enough to place people in places of authority who don’t have a connection to the masses of people. You have to find a way to connect to the masses of people and make them believe that they have access and that you care about them. You’re going to disagree on things, but at least they have your ear.’ “He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘That means reaching out. Staying away from the NAACP or staying away from the Congressional Black Caucus gives the larger perception that you’re not accessible and maybe that you don’t care. Without any countervailing evidence suggesting otherwise’, I said, ‘Most people are going to go away with that thought, not about who you appointed to the cabinet.'” Bush appeared unconvinced. “He went back to the whole thing about the vote on Election Day and it being only 11 percent,” Mfume remembers. “He conceded that it’s up [from 9 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2004], the highest that it’s been for a Republican president in a long time. He wants to do more, he said, because he’s not satisfied believing that only 11 percent of Black people support him and that, more than anything else, he wants to try to find a way to work on that.” Bush has refused to meet with the CBC since early in his first term and became the first sitting president not to address an NAACP convention since Warren Harding in the early 1920s. Mfume was bitterly disappointed when Bush declined to address the NAACP convention last summer. He told the NNPA News Service at the time, “We’re not fools, if you’re going to court us, court us in the daytime, but not like we’re a prostitute where you can run around at night or behind closed doors and want to deal with us, but not want to deal with us in the light of day.” Mfume revisited the subject Bush’s failure to address NAACP delegates in Philadelphia. “This was interesting: I said, ‘I told you in 2000 when you were a candidate that if you came to our convention, you would be treated with the dignity befitting any candidate running for the office and I delivered,” Mfume recounts. “He said, ‘You are right.’ He said, ‘They didn’t whip it up, like they did for Al Gore, but they didn’t boo me.’ I said, ‘You’re right. We are a dignified people and we received you in a dignified way.’ He said that he didn’t think that would be the case this time, even if I had made him the same kind of promise. He thought that this campaign was so heated and that there would be booing, hissing and heckling.” Although he does not state it outright, it is clear that Mfume is still miffed that Bush shunned the NAACP but has spoken to the National Urban League’s annual convention for the past two years. “He’s still of the mindset that the attacks on him have been personal and the ones on his party have been below the belt,” Mfume says. “I don’t know this but my sense is that he was probably advised to just stay away, go to the Urban League – that’s safe -and so, he’s been there a couple of times.” Mfume says now that Bush has met with him, the NAACP needs an overture toward the president. “If the Association wants to keep this thing going, diplomatically, they have to send a signal,” he says. Mfume says that could range from extending invitations for Bush to address the NAACP board or its next convention to sending letters on pending legislative issues. He explains, “We have an opportunity to try to get something done. On many issues, there is not going to be any real progress. But on some things, I think we can move the ball and make it better for Black people in this country on issues A, B and C. Then, we’ve accomplished something. Maybe it goes back to my political upbringing, but if you don’t bring home the bacon, at the end of the day, the question is: Why did you ever go to the store?” Mfume denied a report by conservative columnist Armstrong Williams that he had asked Julian Bond to tone down his anti-Bush rhetoric. “He and I never talked about that,” he says, referring to Bond. “It’s hard for me to tell Julian what to do because I serve at the pleasure of the board and he’s the chair.” Three days after meeting with Mfume, Bush angered civil rights activists by announcing that he will re-nominate 20 ultra-conservative judges that the Senate refused to confirm, including 16 that were rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee or blocked on the floor. It was yet another indication that Bush will stay true to his Right-wing leanings.Mfume challenged Bush to go beyond his base. “I said to him, ‘Mr. President, you have a rare opportunity that some presidents don’t get.’ I said, ‘Your father didn’t get it.’ He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘That’s the opportunity to have a second term… The real question that you have to deal with is how you want to be remembered by history. What do you want historians and people to say and tell their children about your presidency? And I don’t think that it should be a story of anarchy and separation and here’s a real opportunity, a second bite at the apple.” Will Bush take that bite? Mfume is unsure. “I said to him that he’d be measured by his deeds and actions, not his words. People rally around actions, not rhetoric.”