"The Bush announcement proposes spending $20 million more each year for education in all of Africa, which is the cost of building just one large high school in the United States," Sperling said. "This proposal is very disappointing."
...The White House hopes the new African initiative will ease criticism about U.S. spending on developing nations and projecting a compassionate image of Bush to both foreign leaders and American voters. The $10 billion U.S. foreign aid budget is the lowest among rich nations as a percentage of economic output.
Memo to the "Bush can do no wrong" crowd
So much for Dubya taking the Democrats' issues away, he just bolstered their hand.
Pandering is wrong and condescending. This money doesn't belong to the President, it's not his to give away. And the GOP will never match the Democrats in shamelessness. When Bush plays on the Left's turf, we all lose. He's setting up future losing battles that don't need to be fought by conceding on principle now.
The President's African pandering is stupid on so many levels, I can't even guess how his apologists will spin out of it.
But here they come...
