Bush gets 'A' for effort in Spanish

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In the White House, as of yesterday, "se habla español."

George W. Bush made history on Cinco de Mayo by becoming the first president to deliver a version of his weekly radio address from the Oval Office entirely in Spanish.

The president paid tribute to Mexican Americans and emphasized his policies aimed at improving relations with Mexico. Bush, who speaks Spanish sometimes haltingly, recorded his address in a slow and well-pronounced manner, impressing many Spanish-speaking listeners.

"The history of Mexican-American relations has had its troubled moments, but today our peoples enrich each other in trade and culture and family ties," Bush said.

Congressional Democrats also courted Latinos with a dueling address - also in Spanish - in which House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri and Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas criticized Bush for essentially talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

Friday, Bush and his family celebrated Cinco de Mayo early with a fiesta on the South Lawn that included mariachi music, folkloric dancing, appearances by Mexican actors Thalia and Pablo Montero, and plenty of Mexican food.

"He surrounded himself with Hispanic families and played Latin music at his political rallies, but so far his deeds have not matched his words," Gephardt said in English. Reyes spoke in Spanish.

Otto Santa Ana, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has a doctorate in linguistics, credited Bush with delivering a well-spoken speech that contained no grammatical errors.

"He's no orator, either in English or Spanish," Santa Ana said. "It's sort of like, pobrecito, he's making a good effort. In some words, he lost some syllables, but otherwise he did fine."

Bush noted that he has invited Mexican President Vicente Fox to be the guest of honor at his first White House state dinner and said: "Whether the issue is free trade or energy production, environmental protection or the control of illegal drugs, our interests are often the same."

Bush's past forays into Spanish have earned him a few laughs. On his last campaign stop in California, he mistakenly asked voters for their "boots" instead of "votes."

Friday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer joked that Bush "hopes not to massacre Spanish as cruelly as he has done with English."