Bush's meeting with black leaders

Also in today's New York Times is a report by Elisabeth Bumiller on a one-hour meeting between President Bush and 20 African-American religious and community leaders. In this meeting, he pledged that he would fight for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and that fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa remained a priority. Perhaps strangest of all, he argued that they should support his plan to partially privatize Social Security, based on the reasoning that such changes could benefit blacks as they have a shorter average life span than whites and end up putting more money into the retirement system than they take out. This is our president in action: rather than addressing the health problems that result in shorter life spans for blacks and other minorities, he tries to sell them on the idea that their shorter life spans mean they would benefit from his plans on Social Security. The article said all the leaders were supporters of Bush.