The speech drew little attention in the midst of the presidential campaign news and the continued turmoil in the stock markets.
But with Americans struggling to pay bills and concerned that their jobs will disappear along with their retirement savings, President Bush is holding strong to his belief that whatever economic problems the United States is facing at the end of his term, the nation must put aside money for foreign assistance.
It's a tough battle, and it comes up against what pollsters regularly discover: Americans consistently vastly overstate the amount of foreign aid the United States dispenses and, in particular, the percentage of the federal budget that it represents.
Speaking at a White House conference on international development last week, Bush put it this way:
During times of economic crisis, some may be tempted to turn inward--focusing on our problems here at home, while ignoring our interests around the world. This would be a serious mistake. America is committed--and America must stay committed--to international development for reasons that remain true regardless of the ebb and flow of the markets.
The Washington Post took note of Bush's speech. It reported that the United Nations had figured that even before the market went south, higher food prices meant that 925 million people faced chronic hunger.
Now they are comic book, radio, television and movie super heroes, all rolled into one.
The Democratic presidential nominee, who began Saturday saying that McCain trying to distance himsef from the president was akin to "Tonto getting mad at the Lone Ranger," ended it by saying "it's like Robin getting mad at Batman."
"John McCain hasn't been a maverick -- he's been a sidekick when it comes to George Bush's economic policies," Obama said.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin, in the mid-1960s television series "Batman." Credit: Museum of Radio & Television
Even as he nears the final weeks of his term, President Bush is facing more trouble over the handling of prisoners and the war crimes tribunal at Guantanamo.
The Los Angeles Times is fronting a story Saturday by Josh Meyer saying that the Air Force general running the tribunals is facing two investigations into his conduct.
The most serious: an examination into whether he abused his power and "improperly influenced the prosecutions of enemy combatants."
Meyer is reporting that military officials said the internal Air Force investigation of Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann was launched "only after a preliminary inquiry found sufficient grounds to move forward."
After a major setback by the Supreme Court last June, the investigation raises anew questions about the troubled effort to prosecute detainees picked up in Afghanistan and other distant fields in the campaign against terrorism.
Among the allegations against Hartmann that are being reviewed by the Air Force: that he improperly bullied prosecutors, logistics officials and others at Gitmo, leading to cases going to trial before they were ready, and one prosecution in which the charges were unwarranted.
There are also assertions that he used coerced evidence despite objections from prosecutors.
It's been nearly five months since President Bush and John McCain were seen at the same place at the same time. And Sarah Palin has yet to get into the same frame as Bush and McCain.
Thanks to Saturday Night Live, here they are, all three, all in the Oval Office.
Watch Bush bumble. Watch Palin fawn.
And watch McCain squirm.
And why shouldn't he squirm?
He's spent nearly five months trying to avoid being seen anywhere near Bush -- physically or politically. Does he really need Bush grinning and telling voters that when they think of McCain, "think of me, George W. Bush. Think of this face"?
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino sent out this e-mail a few minutes ago:
Today the President and Mrs. Bush cast their ballots for the 2008 election during the early voting process. The ballots will be mailed back to Texas today.
So, there will be no trips to the fire station polling place in Crawford, where the president voted in 2006.
Perino said the Bushes planned to spend election night at the White House.
Oh, by the way, for whom did they vote?
Do we really have to answer that? Apparently, we do.
Consider: The president has barely seen John McCain this year. He didn't make it to the Republican National Convention. He's spending the final days of the election campaign at the White House, and not at get-out-the-vote rallies for the John McCain-Sarah Palin ticket.
Gimme a break.
For those who want everything nailed down--or perhaps for those just harking back to the endorsements of Barack Obama by former Bush administration biggies Colin L. Powell and Scott McClellan--Perino dispatched a subsequent message 19 minutes later.
Under the subject line "I find this hard to believe..." she wrote:
But so many reporters have asked just who the president voted for, I guess I have to make it clear--for months the president has said he supports John McCain for president and of course he voted for him.
And now comes his grinning declaration, taped for a new weekend CNN show, "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," that he has a favorite in the presidential election, and it is not John McCain.
His face lighting up as bright as his French blue shirt, it is clear what he's going to say before he opens his mouth.
So the week that began when one former top Bush administration figure, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, endorsed Obama ends with the endorsement of another.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino indicated as recently as Wednesday that the president indended to vote for McCain.
— James Gerstenzang
Photo: Scott McClellan and President Bush, in 2006. Credit: Ron Edmonds / Associated Press
Sen. John McCain hit him for leaving future generations with a mountain of debt, failing to meet the cost of bigger Medicare expenses, and abusing the power of his office. He said of the Bush years and his own Republican Party: "We just let things get completely out of hand."
But White House Press Secretary Dana Perino brushed it aside today.
McCain dissed the president in an interview with the Washington Times -- not a bunch to lightly dis the prez themselves, at least not the way they go after the Democrats. He went after him again today, while campaigning in Florida, for not moving quickly enough to help homeowners in the housing and credit crisis.
But none of it could bring Perino to suggest the president was unhappy with the Republican presidential nominee.
Here's how she dismissed the matter at the daily White House news briefing:
This is all I'll say on it, is that the president stands by his policies. The president believes that a Republican Congress has got a lot more done than the current Democrat-led Congress. He supports John McCain and he still believes that he can and should win, and he'll continue to support him until election day.
Question: Follow on that, McCain said that the president had let things get completely out of hand. That's a pretty damning statement of a president who McCain supported and supports him.
Perino: I'm not going to comment on the words that our candidate chooses to use. All I'll say is that the president stands by his policies. He also stands by John McCain.
During the two weeks before election day 2000, President Clinton was a busy man.
He spent nearly half his time out of town, campaigning for Democratic candidates in New York (his wife and others), Kentucky, California, back to New York, and Arkansas. He spoke at several political events in Washington, D.C., too.
There were private receptions and public rallies. And even as Al Gore, the Democrats' presidential candidate and Clinton's vice president, sought to distance himself from the president to leave no doubt about his own political identity, Clinton was aggressive -- and very out there -- on behalf of Democratic candidates.
Friday is pretty busy: Briefings at the National Security Agency, an Oval Office meeting with the secretary-general of NATO, and a ceremony bringing Albania and Croatia into the Atlantic alliance.
The president is spending this weekend at Camp David, the ultra-private presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
On Monday, he is meeting with the president of Paraguay, and, with Laura Bush, he is speaking at a White House reception marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt.
And on it goes.
What's missing?
Hint: Is there an election taking place?
When he blessed McCain's bid for the presidency last March, Bush said he would campaign for or against the Republican -- whichever would help.
That was before the Wall Street meltdown and broader global financial crisis. So, we're not likely to be seeing any picture like this one -- at the White House or anywhere -- in the next few days:
As of now, with his poll numbers continuing to bump along near record lows for an incumbent president, and even McCain structuring much of his campaign as a contrast to the last eight years, Bush is neither working for nor against his preferred successor.
He's just disappearing.
For the president's public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
-- James Gerstenzang
Upper photo: President Clinton at a Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza rally in 2000. Credit: Anacleto Rapping / Los Angeles Times. Lower photo: Sen. John McCain and President Bush at the White House in 2008. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian / The White House.
When President Bush sits down next month with the leaders of the major developed and developing nations to figure out what went wrong with the global economy and hash out a coordinated response, save a seat for: President-elect Barack Obama? President-elect John McCain?
The president-in-waiting has been invited to the Nov. 15 summit of the Group of 20, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said this morning. Presumably, no RSVPs have been returned.
(She didn't note that Obama had called on Sept. 19 for such a meeting. She didn't have to. He pointed it out himself after a meeting with economic advisors in Richmond, Va.)
Certainly, there will be all the talk between election day and the inauguration on Jan. 20 of "just one president at a time," but Perino said: "We will look for his input after the election."
But how much authority will the president bring to the table? That's a trickier question for the White House.
Here's Perino's answer:
I think all of the leaders have agreed that we wanted to have this summit. They wanted the president to be able to host it, and he's excited to be able to do so. We will seek the input of the president-elect. But we didn't want the financial crisis to happen at all and -- but now that it's happened, we can't control the timing of it. And we think it's important not to wait to have this meeting.
In other words, the crisis is now, the president is the president, and he'll soldier ahead until he's no longer the president.
One thing the participants can expect to hear from the president (after all, he's been saying it for years): This is not the time to retreat on international trade; rather, the global economy and individual countries will benefit from liberalized trade rules.
One thing you are not likely to hear coming out of the meeting: specific details of a new course to solve the problem.
That, Perino said, would be more likely from another summit -- and, yes, George W. Bush is thinking of attending. As president. It would be that soon.
He gets along so well with Johnson-Sirleaf -- and respects her efforts to pull up her impoverished, politically-shredded country so much -- that he was uncharacteristically (and unsmirkingly) patient while the "Iron Lady" of Africa delivered a lengthy, effusive introduction to a speech he delivered Tuesday in downtown Washington on international development.
Among those cheering Bush was Irish rocker Bob Geldof, who with Bono has devoted huge amounts of time to wrestling with global poverty issues and, with Bono, has struck up a curious friendship with Bush.
In his final years in office, the president, too, has put a special emphasis on tackling the continent's myriad health and hunger problems. The result: He has gained praise from quarters where he often finds only criticism.
And as Countdown to Crawford noted this summer, with Iraq still unsettled and Afghanistan increasingly dangerous, Africa could emerge as one of his foreign policy successes.
Bush visited with Johnson-Sirleaf last February in Monrovia. On that steamy day, he drove along a freshly paved downtown boulevard that days before had been impassable except very slowly and in the sturdiest of four-wheel drive vehicles.
The city turned out for Bush, whose visit was limited to daylight hours for security reasons. He rewarded guests at a presidential luncheon with encouragement for the democratic path on which Liberia has embarked -- and this impromptu dance performance.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
