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Posted on 05/07/2002 6:22:45 AM PDT by xsysmgr
Bill Clinton is passionate about card games — hearts, in particular — but it's George W. Bush who has more than one ace up his sleeve. Or so we learned during the president's visit, last week, to California.
Bush proved once again that he's the undisputed headline act on California's salmon-and-arugula-laced money trail. In two days and only two events in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley, the President raked in close to $4.5 million for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon Jr. and the state GOP. Rudy Giuliani may be a GOP rock star, but he'd do well to raise half as much from the same audience. Among Republicans, nobody fills up a room, at $1,000 a plate, like POTUS.
And the president demonstrated political smarts absent in his father's administration.
Bush "43" devoted part of his L.A. day to commemorating the 10th anniversary of the city's South-Central riots. You'll recall that, a decade ago and in the middle of a presidential race, it took Bush "41" and his handlers about a week to decide that the destruction merited a presidential tour. By the time they got to California, Clinton had already been there and beaten his opponent to the empathetic punch. Kudos to the younger Bush, who clearly doesn't intend to repeat the sins of the father — and isn't shy about venturing into neighborhoods many conservative Republicans would avoid.
It's the third political ace — the one Bush has yet to play — that bears watching. And that would be how serious this White House is about a less-than-serious California.
In the nation's capital, the president wrestles with war, threats of terrorism, and a stubborn economy.
In California's capital, lawmakers should be wrestling with a runaway state budget deficit. Instead, what's on Sacramento's mind these days: Making it easier for the slavery descendants to sue California companies, and requiring all state public schools to drop their Indian team mascots.
It's the kind of inane political correctness that a serious wartime president doesn't have time for. And maybe he won't have to. Although the 2004 election is far off in the distance, one can easily build a scenario that has Bush easily reelected, without California's help.
Here's how he does it. Bush won 271 electoral votes in November 2000, before the 9/11 attacks ended the prattle about his legitimacy, or his skills and stewardship. If the election were held today, it's safe to assume that Bush would either lead or be within striking distance in the following seven states he narrowly lost to Al Gore: Oregon (a 7% defeat), Iowa (6%), Maine and Pennsylvania (5% each), Minnesota (2%), and New Mexico and Wisconsin (statistical dead heats).
Those seven states will account for 64 electoral votes in 2004, nine more than California. Does the Bush White House go for broke and spend $15-20 million in hopes of winning California, which Bush-Cheney lost by 1.3 million votes, or spread the wealth in 7 less expensive states the ticket lost by a combined 313,00 votes?
But that's just the mathematical side of the California equation. There's a second factor in play, and it's the mental aggravation of a popular Republican president traversing the continent to confront the silliness that is America's Left Coast — California, in particular.
On the same day that Bush arrived in San Jose for a speech and a Simon luncheon, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story, "President and S.F. — Never the Twain Have Met," that dwelled on Dubya's avoidance of the City by the Bay both as president and a presidential candidate. Never mind the fact that San Francisco was the least Republican county in California in the last presidential election — one in six San Francisco voters opting for Bush. Or that it remains a hotbed of hotheads. A week before the president's visit, some 20,000 locals took to the street to march again U.S. policy in the Middle East and "the real axis of evil: war, racism, poverty" — turning downtown in an ocean of Palestinian flags. Apparently, this doesn't matter to San Franciscans who feel it's their right to have the president on their turf, even if it's to dis him.
But if San Franciscans were moping about the president's seeming indifference, the good folks over in Berkeley were downright whiny. Also on the same day of the president's Bay Area visit was an article in UC-Berkeley's Daily Cal lamenting how big-name commencement speakers were avoiding the university because of its perceived "anti-American" reputation. Among those reportedly declining an invite: Vice President Cheney (although the vice president's office says Berkeley is still one of 13 schools under consideration).
Berkeley sits by the bay, but it's no day at the beach for either party. Madeline Albright and Janet Reno, the last university's last two commencement speakers, were protested. A safe haven for Republicans it's not. All of 4,177 Berkeley city residents went with the Bush-Cheney ticket — one in every thirteen Berkeley votes. That's not enough to fill up one-third of the campus basketball arena.
One can't blame the White House for staying north, south, and east of San Francisco and Berkeley. And it's too bad, because it's the locals' loss. For if they bothered to listen to Bush and Cheney over their own noise and protestations, they'd find words and a message they could learn to appreciate.
"We are a generous and caring people. We don't believe in a sink-or-swim society," the president said in revisiting his "compassionate conservative" philosophy before a San Jose audience. "The policies of our government must heed the universal call of all faiths to love a neighbor as we would want to be loved ourselves."
"When schools are teaching, when families are strong, when neighbors look after their neighbors, when our people have the tools and the skills and the resources they need to improve their lives," Bush added, "there is no problem that cannot be solved in America."
It's a message that goes beyond traditional Republican bounds. It will surprise audiences who blindly equate conservatism with callousness.
And if California isn't willing to listen, you can't blame the president if he takes it elsewhere in 2004.
— Bill Whalen is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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GRRR!!
This guy is starting to scare me. He wants government "to love a neighbor as we would want to be loved ourselves"? Uh....
Anyways, I hope he was just spewing this claptrap because somebody really savvy wrote it for him.
WIN!!! WIN!!!
Simon wins the governorship in 2002, and W. wins over California, as he is starting to already. Then, California will have a more conservative base to work from in 2004 and W. can capture the hearts and votes of the other states as well.
Another typical 'liberal' line piece. 'There is only so much 'pie' so it has to be split up.' Most conservatives think more of the ever-expanding and multiplying pie. All 'ships can be lifted' if the focus is on something far greater than ourselves.
The total of the San Francisco/Los Angeles margin was almost 2 million, I believe. If the San Francisco Chronicle and the Los Angeles Times were more interested in selling product rather than their AGENDA, they would support Simon for Governor, and both of the 'liberal hotbeds' would go silently and strangely to what's right, IMHO.
Whalen is an idiot, and he doesn't understand what Simon offers in the way of conservatism that can win those non-traditional constituencies for Republicans: environment, education, suburban soccer moms, and the indigent poor. The Carl Rove drive to win the hand-out race is a loser, because the Democrats will ALWAYS be willing to outspend and out-pander the Republicans. It's time for real compassion and real leadership that can demonstrate how conservative ideas serve those interests better than bureaucracies motivated to build dependency and justify increasing budgets through failure.
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