NYT: White House Door Opens for Some Black Critics [View All]

....Wednesday, the new president of the N.A.A.C.P., Bruce S. Gordon, and another prominent black leader - Donna Brazile, who managed Al Gore's campaign for president in 2000 against Mr. Bush - joined 30 people at the White House to talk with Mr. Bush about the rebuilding effort in New Orleans.

For Mr. Gordon, the meeting was the third with Mr. Bush in just three months, starting with a private one-on-one session in the Oval Office in September and then a smaller meeting with other black leaders earlier this month.
...
"I can't sell his tax cuts, I can't sell his war," Ms. Brazile said. "But on Katrina, if I can establish assistance and help - I mean, forget partisanship, I can be partisan my whole life. This is where I'm from, this is family. And if I have access to the president of the United States and don't take advantage of it. ..."

"'I know some Democrats won't agree with me," Ms. Brazile said. "But then again, their families didn't lose anything."

She described Mr. Bush as very informed on what had taken place. "He gave me information. Like I didn't know that prior to Katrina we may have had too many hospital beds instead of enough," she said. "He put that information into my head."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/politics/22naacp.html