Cabinet Secretaries Hit the Road for Bush
By LAURA MECKLER
The Associated Press
Friday, August 27, 2004
-snip-
Under government rules, a secretary's travel costs are divided according to
how much of a trip consisted of official events and how much was political.
The government covers the official share and campaigns or political parties
are supposed to pay for the political portion.
It's hard to tell what's official and what isn't. Often events that seem
political have an official veneer, qualifying them for the government
expense account.
Snow has hopped from one swing state to another. This year, he has been to
15 of the 18 states that are most competitive in the White House race,
including Florida and Ohio, which he visited five times apiece. He's
traveled to only a few states that are not on the competitive list.
Once he's in town, part of Snow's job is to explain how "the president's
policies are strengthening the economy, creating jobs," said chief spokesman
Rob Nichols.
And that's just what Snow does.
"There is a reason why the president's tax cuts focused on helping your
businesses," Snow told business leaders in Little Rock, Ark., "because we
understand that it's businesses like yours that create jobs, and that is the
president's top economic priority."
Some of the visits seem non-political, like Snow's trip to the Iowa State
Fair, where he handed out Lewis and Clark nickels to little kids. But
politics was not far behind.
Standing on the fair's stage, normally used for talent shows, Snow spent
most of his time touting the Bush administration's tax cuts and talking
about other policy issues.
Nichols said Snow went to Iowa rather than Nebraska for the nickel launch
because he was invited by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican.
Like all Cabinet secretaries, Nichols said, Snow clears and coordinates his
travel with the White House.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld prefers to reach out over the radio. Since
the beginning of July, he has done a series of radio interviews. Some were
with nationally syndicated shows; all but one of the rest were with stations
in swing states.
Rumsfeld did travel to Arizona Thursday, where he brushed aside a question
about calls for his resignation after a report blamed him and other senior
defense leaders for lax oversight of military-run prisons in Iraq. "The
president asked me not to get involved in politics, so I don't," he said.
Even Colin Powell, who has said that as secretary of state he will keep a
traditional distance from politics, has not steered clear altogether. He is
skipping the Republican National Convention next week, but he regularly
defends administration policies that are very much at issue in the campaign,
including the war in Iraq.
And Powell made an appearance this month - in Ohio.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37489-2004Aug27?language=printer
--
Can you help provide the military records that prove Lt. George W. Bush
completed his military commitment?
This is an issue of much greater significance than
nitpicking Kerry's military record, which he actually earned in combat in
Viet Nam. Using all available records, except for Bush's unsupported
'honorable discharge' one can only conclude Bush was AWOL and/or a deserter
during war time.
So do your patriotic duty for your "war president" and prove he hasn't sent
thousands of men and women to be injured or killed in Iraq while avoiding
fighting in Viet Nam himself and then apparently going AWOL.
.
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