Fondness For Las Vegas, Nevada

On February 9, promoting economic stimulus legislation at a town hall meeting in Indiana, President Obama had said

You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime...."

The President has an eye toward the economic health of the entire nation. A trip to Sin City cancelled may mean a trip made to another city in its place; Goldman Sachs Group, which has accepted $10 billion from American taxpayers, announced on February 9 that it had cancelled a three-day trip scheduled for Las Vegas and moved it to San Francisco. And if in response to public scrutiny of a corporation, a convention is cancelled, the funds not used for the gathering may instead be devoted to research, credit extended to a business or an individual, or some other productive enterprise. Hardly a disaster for the nation or its taxpayers.

Still, it's not surprising that the mayor of the affected city would jump up and attack the Mr. Obama's remark and an exorcised Mayor Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas whined "That's outrageous, and he owes us an apology. He owes us a retraction."

Not so the chairman of the Republican Party, which once (and to a lesser extent, still) posed as the protector of "family values," who complained

Earlier this year, the President told an audience in Elkhart, Indiana, 'You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime.'" Those days are over. "That quote was seen by many as an insult to Las Vegas," and, by the way, Vegas tourism is way down, and Vegas unemployment is way up.

On one side we have a President who could have told corporate executives, as presumably Limbaugh would have supported, "go right ahead. Take your corporate jets, take the taxpayers' money, and go fly anywhere you like." Or "go to Las Vegas-gamble and enjoy the women- but don't take that business trip to New York or Chicago." Or he might have said "go to Las Vegas. Just avoid that trip with the family to the Arch in St. Louis, Cape Kennedy in Florida, Williamsburg in Virginia, or Disneyland in California."

No, President Obama used Sin City- a nickname not attributed in jest or error- in his warning that the public interest is not to be neglected while heads of corporations surviving only through the largess of the American people pursue the perfect party on the taxpayers' dime. If only Mr. Limbaugh were half as interested in the nation, or even in his audience, as he is in the commercial interests of Las Vegas.

Sin can't be avoided altogether, and everyone likes to have fun. But it seems slightly incongrous for the representative of the "family values" party to show a marked preference for Las Vegas, Nevada over the values and economic betterment of the American people.