Where the President Isn't

Larry Lipman and Ken Herman write in the Palm Beach Post: "Rather than embracing the Medicare drug law and Bush's call for private Social Security investment accounts, delegates at work sessions on those issues overwhelmingly rejected those positions.

"In nonbinding position statements developed at conference workshops, delegates called for scrapping the 2-year-old Medicare drug law -- which takes effect next month and relies on private insurance companies to provide benefits -- and replacing it with a government-run program similar to how Medicare covers doctor and hospital care.

"Delegates also vehemently rejected any proposal that would divert Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts. Such a proposal had been Bush's top domestic priority earlier this year, but has been largely abandoned since the summer."

Lipman wrote yesterday: "Shouts of protest Monday briefly disrupted the carefully scripted White House Conference on Aging as a handful of delegates demanded the right to introduce and modify resolutions from the floor.

"Many of the delegates -- some wearing red campaign-style buttons that read 'Fix Medicare Rx' -- want the ability to offer a resolution that recommends substantially overturning the Medicare drug law by providing drug coverage through the Medicare program rather than private insurers and by allowing the government to negotiate the price of drugs."

Susan Jaffe writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Robert Binstock, professor of aging, health and society at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, said President Bush's absence was a snub. It didn't help matters that Bush made time Tuesday to visit a retirement community in a Washington suburb.

" 'That he went to speak about Medicare in Virginia today, instead of an assembly of delegates from all over the country indicates that he's afraid to speak in anything but a controlled environment,' Binstock said during a session on improving the Medicare program, which provides health care for 43 million older and disabled Americans.

"Also this year, the rules have changed for delegates, so they cannot debate resolutions.

" 'They've convened the best and the brightest people on aging in the field but they don't want input from us,' said Helene Stone, a retired social worker who works for the Lorain County Council on Aging."

Sean Mussenden writes for the Media General News Service about the conference: "Social Security and Medicare were on everyone's mind.

"And so was the president who wasn't there."

From what I can tell, there's not a word about Bush's no-show -- or anything about the conference at all -- in The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, or even on the Associated Press or Reuters wires.