Gov. Pete Wilson of California Tuesday said Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado was out of line when he confronted President Bush during a White House meeting between Bush and a delegation of governors.
At the meeting Monday, Romer, a Democrat, said the administration's budget contains numerous "gimmicks" and derided Bush's $50 billion five-year cut in military expenditures as an inadequate "peace dividend" to address pressing domestic problems.A heated exchange ensued between Bush and Romer, incoming chairman of the National Governors' Association, after Bush made an appeal to the governors to endorse his economic package.
Wilson, a Republican, was asked during an interview on the Fox "Morning News" program if he thought Romer was out of line.
"Well, frankly, I think he was," Wilson said. "Some people have called it a cheap shot," Wilson added. "I think that you don't take people by surprise when you have agreed to a different set of rules. It looked rather staged. It didn't look terribly spontaneous."
White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, traveling with Bush to Florida Tuesday morning, told reporters, "The easiest and cheapest trick in the world is to be rude to the president to try to get in the news."