A GEORGE BUSH TIMELINE….Here’s George Bush’s timeline on racial sensitivity for the past few weeks:
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December 5, 2002: Trent Lott suggests the country would have been better off if segregationist Strom Thurmond had won the 1948 presidential election. George Bush condemns his words but does not call for his resignation.
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January 7, 2003: Bush renominates Charles Pickering, a man reviled by blacks for his record in civil rights cases, to a federal judgeship.
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January 15, 2003: Bush chooses Martin Luther King’s birthday to announce his opposition to the University of Michigan’s affirmative action program.
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January 17, 2003: The White House leaks a story saying that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice agreed with Bush’s opposition to affirmative action. This turns out to be a lie and Rice repudiates the leak the next day.
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Today: Time magazine reports that Bush has revived the tradition of sending a Memorial Day wreath to the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.
What can you do except shake your head? Is George Bush on a death march to ensure that no African-American ever again even thinks about voting for a Republican?
UPDATE: Time magazine has retracted the story about the wreath. Apparently the wreath has always been sent, and Bush was just continuing the tradition.
