The president talked up tax cuts, tort reform, the war on terrorism, school choice, his faith-based initiative, and his other policies

National Review, August 23, 2004

* The president talked up tax cuts, tort reform, the war on terrorism, school choice, his faith-based initiative, and his other policies. That's not especially notable. The venue for his speech, the Urban League, is. The president made it clear that while he will not speak before the NAACP, which ran vicious ads against him in 2000, he is willing to talk to largely black audiences when conversation and cooperation are at all possible.

By sticking to the message he gives in front of all audiences, and minimizing the racial pandering, he treated blacks as Americans, albeit Americans with some marked concerns, rather than as an interest group. But this speech is only a start. The most direct form of political communication that most Americans receive is campaign advertising. Republicans have not advertised much on the radio and television shows that blacks tend to watch. They will have to change that if they want to broaden the conversation to include a black public that is badly served by its current elites.