Each political party loves to complain about the other side when the President of their party is out of the country and the opposition party criticizes him.
They both like to say that the opposition party is ignoring a long-standing tradition of not criticizing the President when he is on foreign soil.
If there ever was such a tradition, it had no impact on the GOP when Bill Clinton was on one of his many "America Apologizes" tours. And, with George W. Bush in Central America over the weekend, the Democrats used that trip as an opportunity to sneer at him.
But, as has been their pattern for over a year now, the Democrats didn't do it very well.
Here's what happened: Every Saturday the President does a weekly radio address and the opposition party gets a chance to reply.
About eight people ever listen to the President's address. And there is no evidence that ANYone outside the immediate family of the opposition responder ever listens.
This past weekend the geniuses over at the Democratic National Committee decided to try to cast President Bush's trip as "pandering" to the U.S. Hispanic vote.
If George W. Bush had been the Governor of, say, North Dakota (where the percentage of Hispanics in the population is pretty small) they might have been able to make a case. Or, at least there might have been a case to be made.
As it happens, the State of which George W. was Governor has a fairly significant, and fairly well-documented, Hispanic population. Further, even as Governor, Bush had a good deal of interaction with Latin American leaders.
Second, the Democrats had the bad taste to ask a guy named Antonio Villaraigosa to deliver the address.
Villaraigosa bills himself as the "Speaker Emeritus" of the California house. While it is true that he was the speaker of the Assembly, it is also true that he is the FORMER speaker because he ran for Mayor of Los Angeles and lost.
And it is true that Mr. Villaraigosa found himself up to his o�dos in the Clinton Pardon scandals, having written letters and made phone calls on behalf of Carlos Vignali who, according to Salon.com, "was the kingpin in a lucrative drug ring that shipped hundreds of pounds of cocaine from Los Angeles to Minnesota. He was sentenced to 15 years."
The tricky part of the Villaraigosa-Clinton-Vignali triad was the fact that Vignali's papa gave huge political donations to public figures he thought might help Carlos, including Villaraigosa. The LA Weekly said Villargaigosa's action, "was a classic case of an elected official accommodating a powerful backer who merited no such accommodation."
So, on the very week that the Democrats are celebrating Campaign Finance Reform, they chose a guy who took a lot of money from a wealthy contributor and then found it in his heart to lobby for that contributor's son to be let out of jail.
Which, by the way, he was. On January 20, 2001. The last day of the Clinton Presidency.
There are plenty of Democratic Hispanic Members of Congress. Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe could have - and perhaps DID - ask any one of them to deliver that radio address. He ended up with a guy who has no standing in foreign affairs, who couldn't get elected in his home city, and who - at a minimum - showed bad judgment in helping to get at pardon for the son of a big contributor and - at maximum - should be investigated for trading favors for contributions.
Terry McAuliffe should be taken to task for (a) approving this line of attack this week; and (b) for choosing the one person who, running for a major political office, appears to have been bought off by a contributor.
And the Democrats wonder why President Bush continues to be held in such high regard by the American people - Norte, Central, and Sur Americans.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today, a photo of Nicole Kidman, a short Spanish lesson, and a brief history of the Saturday Radio Address.
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