AOL: … “Speaker Boehner will have a substantive meeting with President Hu later this week,” his spokesman, Michael Steel, told me by e-mail. (It’s set for Thursday on Capitol Hill.) But the speaker’s press office did not address questions of why Boehner declined all three Obama state dinners, or whether he believes nothing meaningful can be achieved by spending social time with world leaders and their delegations…
But in the world of protocol and etiquette, “You really have to be sick, dead or dying to regret a state dinner invitation,” McBride noted.
“I hate to think it would be pettiness: ‘I don’t like the president so I am not coming,'” said a former social secretary in a Republican White House, who requested anonymity. “I think you can assume that the administration, when they have a state dinner, wants to show a bipartisan face” to foreign leaders. Some lawmakers “might be uncomfortable in black tie or white tie, they might be uncomfortable with the positions of the administration.”… (more)
