Sunday, July 13, 2008

Media Watch Edition

The London Times is reporting this morning that a fundraiser for the still-in-planning George W. Bush Presidential Library is offering access to senior Administration figures in return for large cash donations.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.

Now I would, of course, be shocked--shocked--to learn that any politician, certainly one as upright as the leader of the squeaky-clean W. administration, would do anything so blatantly favoring the wealthy and well-connected.

Of more interest will be whether the US media picks up on the story at all.

My prediction: It becomes a minor story for one news cycle at most. Odds are better than 50/50 that no domestic sources pick it up at all. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but don't think I will be.

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