Charlie Brown Strikes Again
Another take on Bush and poverty

Bob Herbert opens his column with:

"The president is Lucy, and he's holding the ball. We're Charlie Brown."

He explains:

"This president had zero interest in attacking poverty, and the result has been an increase in poverty in the United States, the richest country in the world, in each of the last four years. Instead of attacking poverty, the Bush administration has attacked the safety net and has stubbornly refused to stop the decline in the value of the minimum wage on his watch.

You can believe that he's suddenly worried about poor people if you want to. What is more likely is that his reference to racism and poverty was just another opportunistic Karl Rove moment, never to be acted on.

Charlie Brown's sister, Sally, once asked how often someone could be fooled with the same trick. She answered her own question: "Pretty often, huh?"


(I had to type this from our local paper, as one now has to pay to receive NYT op-ed pieces on line.)