From The Boston Globe
By Derrick Z. Jackson

President Bush broke his boycott of the NAACP by copying the speech he gave to the nation’s oldest civil rights group as a candidate in 2000.

On Thursday, Bush said: “I understand that many African-Americans distrust my political party. . . . I consider it a tragedy that the party of Abraham Lincoln let go of its historic ties with the African-American community. . . . We need to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations. . . . I understand that racism still lingers in America.”

In 2000, Bush said: “For my party, there is no escaping the reality that the party of Lincoln has not always carried the mantle of Lincoln. . . . While some in my party have avoided the NAACP and while some in the NAACP have avoided my party, I’m proud to be here. . . . I will confront another form of bias: the soft bigotry of low expectations. . . . Discrimination is still a reality, even when it takes different forms. Instead of Jim Crow, there’s racial redlining and profiling. Instead of separate but equal, there is separate and forgotten. Strong civil rights enforcement will be a cornerstone of my administration.”

Bush hoped he could plagiarize himself to an audience he treated for 5 1/2 years as separate and forgotten. Until Thursday, he was the only sitting president since Warren G. Harding more than 80 years ago not to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Bush’s top moment of success in that regard was when he said he would sign the extension of the Voting Rights Act. This was hardly courageous, as the Senate passed the extension 98 to 0 and the House passed it 390 to 33. More on Bush’s mind was blunting visceral anger at his Iraq debacle and domestic policies that have many Republican members of Congress at risk in the mid-term elections.

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