Source: www.chicagotribune.com

Bush to Address NAACP at 97th Gathering

WASHINGTON -- President Bush plans to speak to the NAACP for the first time since he was a candidate, with the White House announcing the appearance days after the chairman of the civil rights group publicly urged him to attend.

The president had declined invitations to the NAACP's annual meeting for five years in a row, and has often been criticized in speeches by the group's leaders. But under new NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon relations have improved.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is holding its 97th annual gathering at a convention center just a mile from the White House.

Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Bush decided to speak to the group Thursday because of "a moment of opportunity" for the president to tout his civil rights record and mend fences.

"He has an important role to play, not only in making the case for civil rights, but maybe more importantly, the case for unity," Snow said. "Because as long as we have a nation that's in any way divided along racial lines or where politics become a source of division rather one of civil debate and trying to perfect the democracy, that's a problem."

Bush's decision comes in a critical midterm election year, when Republicans fear losing control of Congress and Bush has been working to get more votes for the GOP. Bush received just 11 percent of the black vote in the 2004 election.

In a speech to the convention Sunday, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond blasted the war in Iraq and attacks on voting rights even as he urged Bush to attend the gathering. "This year the convention has come to the president and we hope and pray he is coming to us," Bond said.

Gordon said he was glad Bush is going to speak to the group, especially with renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act still before the Senate. "This is a great opportunity for the president to express his commitment for voting rights reauthorization," he said.

Every president for the past several decades has spoken to the group. Until now, Bush had been the exception

Willis Edwards, an NAACP board member from Los Angeles, said Gordon should get credit for Bush's planned visit.

Gordon has had three meetings with Bush in the year he's headed the civil rights group -- compared to one meeting in nine years Bush had with his predecessor, Kweisi Mfume, a former Democratic congressman. "The White House has evidently listened to (Gordon)," Edwards said.

Snow said Bush has a good relationship with Gordon. While they have political disagreements, "it marks an opportunity to have a conversation," he said.

Gordon agreed. "The communications channels between the NAACP and the administration -- I feel they're wide open," he said. "There ought to be a constructive dialogue between the president and the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. This is a good symbol."

But Rep. Diane Watson, a Democrat from California, was more skeptical about Bush's visit.

The president is "reading the polls," she said. "He says he doesn't pay attention to them, but when he was flying high, he didn't come."

There is a history of bad blood between Bush and the NAACP. During the 2000 presidential campaign, the NAACP's National Voter Fund ran a television ad against Bush. It featured the daughter of James Byrd, a black man dragged to death by three white men in a pickup truck, blaming Bush for refusing her pleas for a hate-crime law when he was Texas governor.

Then, just before the 2004 election, the Internal Revenue Service began looking into the NAACP's tax-exempt status after a speech by Bond that was critical of Bush's policies. Political campaigning is prohibited under the NAACP's tax-exempt status, but the Baltimore-based group called the audit a political smear campaign.