President makes overtures to blacks

President Bush’s upcoming meeting with the Urban League, coupled with his snubbing of more-militant black groups, mirrors his outreach to moderate Palestinians while ignoring Yasser Arafat.

In both cases, Mr. Bush hopes to turn nearly hopeless relationships into constructive dialogues with groups not known for their fondness of conservatives.

But in the case of next week’s meeting with the Urban League, the president is also seeking a more tangible political dividend, an increased share of the black vote in the 2004 election.

“The Republicans are not going to leave African-American voters to the Democrats this time,” said Donna Brazile, who managed the 2000 presidential campaign of Vice President Al Gore. “I already sense a competitiveness, following the 2002 election, among Republicans.

“I’ve heard African-Americans say of Republicans: They’re in our back yard,” she added. “I say ‘No, they’re in our house.’ They’re still trying to figure out what it looks like, but they are competing for African-American votes. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

The president agreed to attend the five-day convention after a Democratic strategist quietly urged Urban League President Marc Morial to telephone Bush political strategist Karl Rove last week.

The strategist also assured Mr. Rove that the president wouldn’t be walking “into the lion’s den” — a reference to the president’s decision not to attend last week’s conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The NAACP has been much more critical of Mr. Bush than the Urban League, even running a political ad in 2000 that had the daughter of dragging-death victim James Byrd saying of Mr. Bush’s opposition to a hate-crimes bill: “It was like my father was killed all over again.”

The NAACP even excoriated several Democratic presidential candidates for missing its conference.

Mindful of those rebukes and not wishing to be shown up by a conservative Republican, several Democratic presidential candidates have agreed to attend the Urban League convention since the president’s decision.

After The Washington Times reported Sunday that Mr. Bush would attend the convention, which begins Saturday in Pittsburgh, an influential black Democrat began using that as leverage to line up wavering Democrats.

“I sent out an e-mail to the Democratic candidates who were sitting on the fence, hemming and hawing about going to Pittsburgh,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “I said, ‘Well, Bush is going.’ A couple of them are now planning to attend.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson and Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, are among the other speakers that had been scheduled for the event.

The president “should have spoken to the NAACP … but I am glad he is doing this,” Mr. Cummings has said, although he added that “I don’t know what his rationale is with regard to speaking with the Urban League.”

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