bush

Capitol City Cacaphony welcomed President Bush to our city for his visit on March 17.. We have become accustomed here to having presidential visits, remembering visits by Presidents Carter, Clinton, and the other Bush, but each one presents different issues and leaves different memories.

Since this site deals exclusively in local matters, we will forgo any comment on whether Saint Paul is indeed the best place for the President to make his energy policy announcement[s], but we should all have a sense of pride that he chose to come here.

The downtown district heating system is one of the crowning gems of George Latimer's tenure as mayor. It is a shame that the White House and the mayor's office seemed to overlook that fact. [See Boos and Bravos.]

That the trip went off nicely and uneventfully is good and does our city proud.

It is interesting to note that planned closing of Kellogg Boulevard was delayed to accommodate the presidential visit. The project, a drastic contriction of our city's downtown arteries, which we weren't sure we liked anyway, has been delayed by act of God [e.g., flood] and act of politics and will now go later into autumn. Let us hope we haven't delayed it into 2002. As Joel Kimball of the [Mpls.] Star-[Journal and]Tribune noted, city officials apparently hoped they would not have to reveal to the President that we have road construction here.

It makes one wonder, if we give leading federal officials the impression that we don't have construction here, why would they ever give us any federal aid for construction projects.