Governor grasps for straws

Sunday, April 12, 2009 | 2:08 a.m.

With President Barack Obama scheduled to visit Las Vegas next month to attend a political fundraiser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., one would think that the governor of the state would want to make the president feel at home.

But Gov. Jim Gibbons, the nation’s worst governor, extended no such courtesy. There is plenty that Gibbons could learn from the popular president, but leave it to the governor to squander a golden opportunity to do just that.

Gibbons instead fired off a letter last week to the president and followed up Tuesday with a rude, condescending news release. The release suggested that Obama is somehow anti-Las Vegas, a wildly inaccurate perception based on a comment the president made in February.

Obama had warned companies that accepted bailout money from taxpayers not to take junkets. He never discouraged tourists from visiting Las Vegas. But Gibbons joined others who have twisted the comment out of proportion, and in so doing sought to divert attention from his own continuous mishandling of the state’s affairs.

“I think a face-to-face meeting between the president, myself, and Nevada business leaders would do a lot to help overcome the perception that President Obama finds visiting Las Vegas somehow offensive,” Gibbons said.

Some hospitality. Not only is Gibbons wrong about Obama, but the governor also came across as a whiner by insisting on a meeting with the president so that the president can learn about Nevada’s struggling tourism economy.

This is laughable given the governor’s shallow grasp of tourism, especially when it comes to the importance of marketing the industry to potential visitors from out of state. Witness his efforts to gut the state tourism budget by proposing to merge the Nevada Tourism Commission with the state Economic Development Commission. Taking a lesson from Gibbons on tourism would be like learning ethics from Bernie Madoff.

We’re certain the president has better things to do than meet with a governor who does not even understand his state’s top industry.