WASHINGTON — Will President Bush put the "-ic" back in "Democratic"?
That was the hot topic around Washington on Monday after the president was asked why, during his State of the Union address last week, he referred to Congress' new "Democrat majority."
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday February 09, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 83 words Type of Material: Correction
State of the Union: An article in Section A on Jan. 30 on President Bush's use of the phrase "Democrat Party" during his State of the Union address said that, according to a search of the UC Santa Barbara American Presidency Project database, the president "was recorded using the term 22 times in 2006." The article should have said the president was recorded using the term at 22 events in 2006. He may have used the term more than once at some events.
"That was an oversight," Bush said in an interview Monday with National Public Radio. "I'm not trying to needle.... I didn't even know I did it."
The issue of whether it is a slur to refer to the Democratic Party without the "-ic" has become an irritant. It comes at a time when Democrats and Republicans are trying to figure out whether they can work together, after years of fierce partisanship in the nation's capital.
Some Democrats said the president's usage in the speech -- even though his prepared text included the "-ic" -- sent the wrong message.
"It's a long-standing intentional partisan political slight," said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff to Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez). "It's kind of like flashing colors in a gang. It's code. It says, 'I'm one of you, I'm a right-wing conservative.' "
And experts on political locution say it's a deliberate, if ungrammatical, linguistic strategy.
"The word 'democratic' has such positive emotional valence ... so they politicize it to use it as a term to describe a group of political rivals," said Roderick P. Hart, a professor of communications and government at the University of Texas in Austin.
"Democrat Party" is not common usage in Texas, Hart said, noting that the only people he had heard use it were "sitting Republican legislators."
For the president's part, when told the term grates on Democrats, he pleaded ignorance. "I didn't mean to be putting fingernails on the board. I meant to be saying, Why don't we show the American people we can actually work together?" Bush told NPR.
For her part, the government's most powerful Democrat, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, has brushed off the controversy. "She takes the president at his word that it was an oversight," said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly.
The use of the term "Democrat Party" goes back decades. One explanation sometimes offered is that Republicans began to use it to hint that corrupt Democrats were not terribly "democratic" and had no right to use that word to describe themselves. Others say it was adopted because it sounds annoying and echoes the word "bureaucrat," with its negative connotations.
