The White House held its first state dinner last night in honor of Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh. America’s and India’s first families dined on a feast of meatless Indian cuisine along with 335 other guests – very few Republicans among them. House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were both invited, though neither attended. Governor Bobby Jindal made the guest list, presumably because he’s an Indian-American. But the political names at the dinner consisted almost entirely of Democrats. Journalists also showed up from all five of the major television networks…except for Fox News.
Obama wasn’t gracious enough to invite his former presidential rival, John McCain, but he did find room on the guest list for two SEIU hacks: Andy Stern, president of the organization, and Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer who is often described as the “Queen of Labor.” Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO was also in attendance. Andy Stern is no stranger to the White House, where he has been Obama’s most frequent guest since new president moved in.
It looks like that $31 million that the SEIU donated to Obama’s campaign really paid off.
In contrast, George W. Bush wasn’t throwing around state dinner invitations to NRA board members or Family Research Council spokesmen. The guest list for Bush’s last state dinner, honoring the Queen of England in 2007, was generally unremarkable, including mostly government officials and a small handful of prominent businessmen.
Rewarding prominent cronies and donors with prestigious White House invitations usually reserved for honorable and decent people? Sounds like classic Chicago politics to me.
And speaking of classic Chicago politics, the most awkward attendee at the dinner had to be former White House attorney Greg Craig. Craig was in charge of developing the legal framework for shutting down the Guantanamo Bay prison. As soon as the political winds began shifting on that issue, Obama unceremoniously kicked Craig to the curb.
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