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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Never mind the critics: With a posse that really looks like America, Bush could become a crossover success.
Dec 22, 2000 | As Eminem finds himself at the top of many a music critic's end of the year "best-of" lists, perhaps George W. Bush's remarkable courting of black America makes a bizarre kind of sense.
Think about it. Before the campaign got underway, there was the dust-up over a Talk magazine profile where Bush mocked death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker's last words, "Please don't kill me!" Hmm. Dismissive of women: Check. The Talk profile was salted with more than a handful of "F-words." Profanity: Check. There was the off-the-cuff reference to New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as a "major league asshole." Verbally retaliating against someone he believes had "dissed" him in print? Check. For the purposes of this article, ignore the rumored drug use, but the DUI story fits the profile. Run-ins with the law: Check. Add in his continuing war with the English language and the Eminem comparisons only grow.
Aside from his various legal battles, what else is Eminem's major claim? He has taken a black art form and, using initially underestimated skills, managed to move a major-league number of CDs, primarily to whites -- yet is respected by blacks for his flow.
Wouldn't it make a perfect kind of sense for the first "black" president -- Bill Clinton -- to be succeeded by the first "white rapper" president -- George "Dubya" Bush?
Of course, the biggest problem with this analogy is that Bush hasn't gotten anywhere near the love from the black community that Eminem has. Heck, Bush hasn't even gotten the props briefly enjoyed by Vanilla Ice. With barely 8 percent of the vote, Bush has received a smaller share of support from black Americans than any Republican candidate since Barry Goldwater in 1964. It is particularly perplexing considering Bush actually sought that support far more than any other recent GOP standard-bearer.
Yet, since the "ratification" of his win, Bush appears to be committed to carving out a Cabinet that "looks like America" -- even more than Clinton did. His first two selections were African-American -- Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Of his first nine appointees, only two (Don Evans and Paul O'Neil) are white men. The diversity is not merely genetic, it's also ideological. Powell and Rice both support affirmative action and some form of abortion rights. And New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who has accepted Bush's offer to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is anathema to the GOP's conservative base because of her strong pro-abortion views (Quick: Name one vocally pro-life member of Clinton's Cabinet in the last eight years. For that matter, think of one pro-life member, period.)
Still, Bush is being criticized by black Democrats and civil rights activists as making only "token" appointments that won't win him many black votes down the road. Then, what are we to make of Bush's sitting down with a group of black ministers Wednesday back in Austin, Texas?
Let's be clear: Considering the non-support Bush received, he didn't have to take valuable time out of his already-shrunken transition period to meet with the ministers. For that matter, was it necessary to have a black secretary of state and national security advisor? During the campaign, there was a quiet whisper among some Republicans that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there was no way the top foreign policy positions in a Republican administration would both go to minorities. Yet it's turned out to be true.
Without waiting for his Cabinet to fill out, Bush proceeds to talk about his faith-based anti-poverty programs with a group of African-American clergy. One of them, the Rev. Floyd Flake, a Democratic former member of Congress, is also being seriously mentioned as a Bush education secretary. During the campaign, these overtures to minorities were dismissed as public-relations measures to cross over to suburban, white, baby-boomer moderates craving a friendlier GOP.
But the campaign is over. Why would Bush continue if he was really just pandering? Especially after such abject failure with blacks at the polls? Perhaps, shockingly, it's because this is the real George W. Bush? Maybe it's important enough to him that he will continue to try and succeed with a reverse crossover -- a home-invasion of black America.
