Bush
Skips Baseball’s Opening Day
By David Walsh
04 April, 2007
World
Socialist Web
If
George W. Bush’s unpopularity and isolation needed to be underscored,
his decision not to throw out the ceremonial opening day ball of the
major league baseball season served the purpose.
Bush spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore
told the Washington Post that the president had been invited by the
Washington Nationals baseball team to throw out the first ball at the
afternoon game between the Nationals and the Florida Marlins at RFK
Stadium, but “it’s not possible with his schedule.”
She elaborated, “He’s
got various meetings during the day, a meeting earlier in the morning
. . . It just wasn’t going to work out.”
With the president’s
ratings languishing, the Post asked Lawrimore whether Bush “feared
he’d get booed.”
“No,” she replied.
“Certainly not.”
Most people over the age
of 10 would be skeptical.
According to the White House,
the president’s schedule included an 11 a.m. meeting on health
savings accounts in the Roosevelt Room and at 2:35 p.m. the presentation
of “the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy to the United States
Naval Academy Football Team in the Rose Garden,” awarded to each
season’s winner of the college football series among the various
service academies.
Of all the recent US presidents,
Bush is most closely identified with baseball, having served (profitably)
as a part-owner of the Texas Rangers’ franchise from 1989 to 1994.
In remarks before a group of baseball Hall of Famers at the White House
in 2004, Bush declared, “You know, I love the game of baseball.
I grew up loving baseball.” He also noted that “One of the
traditions, of course, is for the president to throw out the opening
pitch for baseball.”
The official White House
web site has special pages devoted to baseball. One begins, “When
President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at the 2001 World
Series, the moment not only continued a presidential tradition, but
it symbolized America’s desire to continue life undeterred after
the attacks of September 11, 2001.
“President George W.
Bush’s love of baseball began during his childhood in Midland,
Texas, where he played Little League Baseball and dreamed of following
in the footsteps of baseball great, Willie Mays . . .
“From throwing to catching
and fielding to batting, America’s presidents have long enjoyed
playing or watching a good game of baseball. A soldier’s diary
reveals that George Washington and his men played an early version of
baseball called ‘rounders’ on the fields of Valley Forge.
History records that John Adams played ‘bat and ball’ and
Andrew Jackson played a similar game of baseball called ‘one old
cat.’ Abraham Lincoln’s love of the game was so well known
that an 1860 political cartoon showed Lincoln and his opponents on a
baseball diamond.”
The Baseball Hall of Fame
web site carries an article entitled, “Baseball as patriotism
and pride: the connection between our national pastime and the presidency.”
It declares, “The president’s annual appearance at the start
of each season symbolically renews the bonds that unite the country,
its leaders, and the game—a ceremonial springtime rebirth as America’s
National Pastime. For presidents, baseball offers a welcome connection
to a wholesome, all-American image.
“Baseball and the American
presidency have had a long history together. Since baseball’s
inception in the mid-19th century, presidents have been involved with
the National Pastime in many ways, by participating, watching or supporting.
As far back as 1860, associations between presidents and baseball appeared
in print and illustration. Since 1910, presidents have ceremoniously
rung in the new baseball year by throwing out the first pitch on Opening
Day, providing official sanction to the beginning of the season. In
addition, for more than a century, US presidents have also taken time
from their busy schedules to attend other games, from amateur sandlot
contests near the White House to All-Star and World Series games.”
Photos of presidents, including
famously Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, throwing out the
first ball at crowded stadiums are part of American political lore.
Major League Baseball’s
web site notes, “When you think of Opening Day in Washington ballparks,
you think of presidents throwing out the first pitch in the days of
Walter Johnson and the old Senators.” However, “For this
game [in 2007], the ceremonial first pitch will feature a celebration
of baseball history in the nation’s capital.”
In its article on Bush’s
decision not to attend the game, the Post, inevitably, downplays the
real reasons. The newspaper prefers to suggest that the decision merely
perpetuates “a ritual’s slow decline,” i.e., fewer
presidential appearances on baseball’s opening day in recent decades.
Baseball no longer holds “a singular grip on America’s imagination,”
argues the Post. Baseball may be losing that grip, but the gulf between
the US population and the political establishment is growing at an even
more rapid rate.
Bush’s absence at RFK
Stadium is the result of the fact that he is widely despised by the
American public—and he despises it back. Bush’s approval
ratings hover around 30 percent and Vice President Dick Cheney’s
are even lower.
In 2006, Cheney appeared
at the Washington Nationals home opener—apparently sporting a
bulletproof vest under his baseball jacket—and was roundly jeered.
Fox News and others muted the sound when they ran videos of the vice
president’s appearance, because the booing was so politically
embarrassing. It was a humiliation to which Cheney was not likely to
subject himself again. This year, according to the White House, the
vice president will be speaking at 1:30 pm at a reception for Republican
Senator Jeff Sessions in Birmingham, Alabama.
The alienation of the present
administration from wide layers of the population is perhaps unprecedented
in modern American history. It takes countless forms. From manipulating
information and the media, ensuring that no critics are allowed to attend
any events where the president and vice president appear, to creating
a physical barrier between themselves and the public, this government
is unique.
Both the president and the
vice president speak only before a select type of crowd. Generally,
they address right-wing veterans’ organizations, business groups,
vetted audiences of military personnel and the like.
Recently, for example, Bush
delivered a bellicose attack on opponents of his Iraq war policy to
a Washington DC convention of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
convention, the chief lobbying arm of beef producers and a notoriously
right-wing outfit.
Dick Cheney addressed the
Veterans of Foreign Wars in early March, promising to fix the mess at
the Walter Reed medical center in Washington, where wounded veterans
have been mistreated. In the middle of the month Cheney launched an
attack on war critics before a crowd at the American-Israel Public Affairs
Committee, the well-known pro-Israel lobby (where he was received coolly,
in fact).
It would be unthinkable for
Bush or Cheney to make a spontaneous appearance in any large or even
medium-sized American urban center. Massive security, armies of Secret
Service and local police, bullet-proof SUVs and Black Hawk helicopters
accompany both men on their forays into American and foreign cities.
They move about like the heads of authoritarian regimes or invaders
in hostile territory. Their handlers, with good reason, operate on the
premise that there are many reasons for these men to be despised.
During the recent trial of
former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis Libby in Washington, the difficulty
of assembling an impartial jury was noted by commentators, so deep and
widespread is the hostility to the Bush administration and its cast
of characters. Dozens of potential jurors were excluded after expressing
contempt for the administration and Cheney in particular. The Bush decision
to skip the Nationals’ home opener, in its own fashion, speaks
to the political and social chasm between the people and the ruling
elite.
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