Boston takes dig at Bush over debate

By Bill Delaney/CNN

BOSTON (CNN) -- If you're Texas Gov. George W. Bush, you can run for president, and you can apparently hide from the people of the good city of Boston -- refusing the debate with Vice President Al Gore there that the Commission on Presidential Debates had scheduled.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has a carefully honed theory as to why the Texas governor won't give in: "He gives us real new meaning to the phrase Boston Chicken," said Menino. Like most Massachusetts residents, Menino unabashedly supports Gore.

Menino

Still, the massive, $15 billion traffic tunnel they're building in downtown Boston is far from the biggest dig in town these days.

"Apparently his advisors feel that he will have trouble standing up under tough grilling," said Boston Globe reporter David Nyhan. "He has had some problems with his language. He mispronounces words like bureaucracy or peacemaker becomes pacemaker ... and he is not a polished performer," Nyhan said.

The Bush campaign says declining the debate in Boston has nothing to do with the perceived hostile turf. It is a matter of geography.

"There should be a commission debate, and we picked Missouri rather than either of the other two locations," said Bush communications director Karen Hughes. "And the reason was quite simple: that Missouri was the one that was left out last time."

The trouble is, ornery Bostonians are not accepting being left out this time. Work continues at the University of Massachusetts as if the commission's planned October debate was an un-debateable fact.

"Preparations here are well in hand. And the only thing I would like to say in addition to that is how grateful we are to everyone at the University of Massachusetts," said Janet Brown, executive director of the Presidential Commission on Debates.

Nyhan

Plans also continue at the John F. Kennedy Library -- right next door to the University of Massachusetts -- for a number of forums in conjunction with commission event.

Bush will pay a price if he's a no-show in Boston to taxpayers here in Massachusetts who, after all, fund the state university and whose money has already paid for at least $200,000 in spending on the prospective debate.

Numbers like those are not likely to raise Bush's poll numbers in Massachusetts. However, its still uncertain if a no-show would matter much to voters in the left-leaning Bay State. Menino says it should.

"He's running for president of the United States. Making those decisions to go everywhere in America. It's all about the character of George W. Bush," Menino said.

Which is debatable. Unlike the fact that George W. Bush has dug himself quite a hole in Boston.