Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-09-24 16:48:54.0
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BALTIMORE -

The Republican Party’s Traveling Presidential Road Show comes to Baltimore this week, minus every one of its marquee names. No Rudolph Giuliani, no John McCain, no Mitt Romney, no Fred Thompson. They are terribly busy men, all of them, far too busy to stop and spread a little warmth across a half-century cold shoulder.

Thursday’s All American Presidential Forum, set for Morgan State University and PBS, is billed as an outgrowth of last year’s “Covenant with Black America,” edited by Tavis Smiley, which detailed some of the most pressing issues facing African-Americans.

Smiley will moderate the debate. He wants the GOP candidates to talk about the lingering gaps in income, education, health care and housing between black and white America, which have endured across all these years while Democrats managed to talk a good game and Republicans managed to change the subject.

While he’s at it, Smiley might ask why these candidates think the vast number of African-American voters continue, one election after another, to cast ballots for Democrats and not Republicans.

But, why bother?

Everybody already knows the answer, which is partly explained by all those terribly busy men, far too busy as they run for president to offer a gesture such as showing up for a nationally televised debate.

“We believe this is a missed opportunity for the Republican candidates to reach out and show the kind of unifying leadership that’s paramount, I hope, to choosing a president,” Neal Kendall, executive producer of the debate, said over the telephone the other day.

“It’s very disappointing when the leading candidates don’t come, because it sends a signal. The Republican Party has begun sending signals that they want to include African-Americans in the party. Ken Mehlman [the former party leader under George W. Bush] gave a speech about it. Jack Kemp’s made speeches. Newt Gingrich and Gary Bauer have made speeches. People within the party have helped us make this week’s debate a reality. And now this happens. It’s a missed opportunity.”

Let’s not mince words: It’s also part of the GOP’s continuing cold shoulder toward black people.

This is the party that stood in the way of every piece of legislation offered during the great civil rights years. It’s the party in which Richard Nixon offered his Southern Strategy to divide the electorate by race, George Bush I offered us Willie Horton, Ronald Reagan talked of welfare queens and George W. Bush went to sleep during Hurricane Katrina. All registering among the great symbolic hurts that linger and lock into people’s memories.

And now, as they gather in this endless campaign for the presidency, it’s the party that gathers for a national debate and delivers Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul and perennial candidate Alan Keyes, a late entry, who is always encouraged by GOP leaders since Keyes displays for everyone the fact that there is at least one African-American in the Republican Party.

Well, two.

Five years ago, for example, we had Robert Ehrlich Jr. running for governor of Maryland. He chose Michael Steele as his running mate while his opponent, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, chose someone whose name was lost to history 10 minutes after their campaign ended.

The running mates stunned the whole state. If anyone was going to choose the first black person to run for lieutenant governor, it should have been Bobby Kennedy’s daughter. If any party was going to run an African-American, who could have imagined Maryland’s Republicans, who didn’t have a single black member of Congress or the state legislature (or Baltimore City Council, or probably any county council, for that matter)?

Whatever Steele’s initial impact, it evaporated. The former seminarian, when faced with actual issues such as Ehrlich’s intemperate remarks on multiculturalism, conveniently took a vow of silence. After four years in office, Ehrlich was the only incumbent governor in America to be defeated in 2006. His opponent, Martin O’Malley, chose Del. Anthony Brown as his running mate.

This made the Democratic ticket “multicultural.”

Now the Republican contenders for president come to Baltimore, and their leading figures cannot bother to show up for a debate about issues affecting African-Americans. Nobody will need an explanation. To speak to a live audience of African-Americans is to visit a distant land. To talk about issues facing black people is to talk about foreign policy.

It’s been half a century of a political cold shoulder. And the Republicans still can’t figure out why black people give them years of icy stares in return.

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com.