BYRON YORK
April 5 issue of National Review
In mid March, George
W. Bush traveled to Long Island to help dedicate a new memorial to the
281 people from Nassau County who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The president took part in a ground-breaking ceremony, and while he didn’t
address the crowd, he did speak privately with each of the victims’ family
members who came to the event. But first, he had to direct a little traffic.
A man named Jimmy
Boyle, a retired New York firefighter whose 37-year-old son Michael, also
a firefighter, died in the North Tower of the World Trade Center, was
trying to get to the event but found himself stuck in traffic and the
web of security that surrounds presidential appearances. Boyle was with
his wife, one of his sons, and a staffer for his friend and congressman,
Peter King (R., N.Y.). He drove up to one checkpoint and was told by a
guard to go to another point nearby. He tried that, and was sent to another
checkpoint, and then to another. The runaround continued until King’s
aide called his boss, who had flown to New York with Bush on Air Force
One.
A few minutes later,
with frustration in the car rising, Boyle’s cellphone rang. His son answered
it and said to Boyle, “It’s George Bush.” And indeed it was.
A thoroughly surprised Boyle told the president he couldn’t get past the
checkpoints. “I’ve got some power around here,” said Bush, with
a bit of presidential understatement. “I think I can get you in.”
Just then, another
policeman guarding yet another entrance confronted Boyle and his group.
“The cop said, ‘You can’t go there,'” recalls Boyle, “and
I said, ‘I’m on the phone with the president of the United States.'”
Of course, the policeman didn’t believe it. As the two argued, a golf
cart drove up with two members of the president’s staff, and bingo, Boyle
was in. When the president arrived, he approached Boyle with a smile.
“I told you I could get you in,” he said.
Bush had reason to
pay attention to Jimmy Boyle. Boyle is a past president of New York’s
Uniformed Firefighters Association, Local 94, the largest local firefighters’
union in the country. He’s also a lifetime Democrat who has never voted
for a Republican for president (he was, in fact, head of Firefighters
for McGovern back in 1972). But this year, Boyle plans to vote for George
W. Bush, because Boyle wants the president to keep up the war on terrorism.
All that would be
enough to make Bush grateful, but on that day in Long Island the president
owed Boyle for another reason. In the week before the memorial ceremony,
Boyle, acting not as a retired union chief but as a man who lost his son
on September 11, took it upon himself to defend the president against
charges that his campaign exploited memories of 9/11 in its first set
of advertisements.
One of the commercials
had shown a brief shot — just a second or two — of a firefighter
on a lift with a flag-draped coffin at Ground Zero. Members of an anti-war
group called September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, working with
left-wing foundations and public-relations experts, protested loudly.
They were joined by Boyle’s old friend Harold Schaitberger, head of the
International Association of Fire Fighters, a leading supporter of the
Kerry campaign.
Jimmy Boyle
Schaitberger and his
top staff were in a meeting in Bal Harbour, Fla., when they learned the
commercials were about to appear. The ads were set to debut officially
on Thursday, March 4, but the Bush campaign had put them up on its website
the night before. Schaitberger was watching. “I saw the ads . . .
and we got out a press release Wednesday evening,” Schaitberger says.
“That’s what began to generate a significant response.” By the
time the commercials actually appeared on Thursday, the story was not
the ads themselves but the “controversy” over them. The Bush
campaign was on the defensive.
That’s where Jimmy
Boyle came in. Boyle was at his home in Westbury, Long Island, early Thursday
morning when he heard a report saying that September 11 families and firefighters
were furious about the commercials. Boyle didn’t know what was going on.
“I said, ‘Jeez, I’m a family, and a firefighter, too, and nobody
ever mentioned anything to me,'” he recalls.
When he looked at
the ads later that day, Boyle didn’t see a problem. “I’m not knocking
any family member who’s against the president,” he says, “but
I felt that September 12 was a new world from September 11, and this guy
George Bush stepped up to the plate and became a leader, and I want him
to be able to finish this war.” Boyle talked to a number of his friends
who had lost relatives on 9/11, and they felt the same way.
Boyle decided to write
an open letter in support of Bush. “A few of the voices of September
11 have been critical of President Bush’s campaign advertisements that,
in a respectful way, recall the incredible challenges we all faced,”
Boyle wrote. “Certainly we respect those voices and their opinions.
Those few voices, however, do not speak for all of us.”
Boyle enlisted more
than two dozen other September 11 families to support the letter. He called
people like Ed Sweeney, a retired fire-department captain whose firefighter
son Brian died in the South Tower. “I have no problem with that whatsoever,”
Sweeney says of the Bush ads. “This happened on [Bush’s] watch, and
I think he did a good job taking care of it.” Sweeney was at Ground
Zero on September 14, 2001, when the president climbed on a crushed fire
truck, took a megaphone, and told the crowd that the world would soon
hear from the United States. Those words meant a lot to Sweeney. “It
was one of the most uplifting moments that I can remember,” Sweeney
says. “I was at a low low of all low lows.”
Boyle also called
Ken Haskell, a firefighter who lost two brothers, both firefighters, on
9/11. “I encourage [the president] to use those images,” Haskell
says. “It’s important for people to remember what happened to us.
People are going to be bitter for the rest of their lives for what happened,
but they should blame the terrorists, not the president.”
Boyle did all of his
work unbidden by the White House. Indeed, the Bush campaign had no contact
with Boyle until after the letter attracted a little press attention.
Then the White House got on the ball, and Bush helped Boyle out of that
traffic jam.
In the end, the episode
wasn’t particularly encouraging news for Republicans who worry that the
Bush campaign is not really in top fighting form. Although campaign officials
say they expected the controversy, after the ads debuted the campaign
spent days playing defense. Meanwhile, one of their best spokesmen, Boyle,
was working freelance, unknown to campaign officials.
The situation was
reminiscent of the recent furor over the president’s National Guard service,
in which the White House did not seek out — indeed, didn’t even seem
to want — the assistance of a retired lieutenant colonel who remembered
Bush showing up for duty in Alabama at a time when Democrats charged he
was AWOL. The man had to take it upon himself to help the president.
Charges that Bush
is exploiting September 11 are sure to arise again. The members of Peaceful
Tomorrows are determined to continue the fight, and they have received
almost universally favorable coverage in the press. Of course, the next
time controversy flares, the Bush campaign can turn to Jimmy Boyle. But
nervous Republicans would feel more confident if the Bush forces had thought
of that on their own.
| When he looked at the ads later that day, Boyle didn’t see a problem. “I’m not knocking any family member who’s against the president,” he says, “but I felt that September 12 was a new world from September 11, and this guy George Bush stepped up to the plate and became a leader, and I want him to be able to finish this war.” Boyle talked to a number of his friends who had lost relatives on 9/11, and they felt the same way. What Do You Mean ‘We’? |