Irked Las Vegas Mayor Calls Obama 'a Real Slow Learner'

Oscar Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas, has a message for President Obama: Stop using us as a punch line -- and don't let the door hit you on your way out.

The president took an inadvertent swipe at Sin City on Tuesday at his town-hall meeting in Nashua, N.H., where he described a new imperative for fiscal responsibility. Just as Washington cannot keep up its deficit spending, he said, "responsible families" can't keep spending frivolously either.

"You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college," Obama said. His prepared remarks noted that he should wait for the crowd to applaud after this line.

That crack landed with a thud for Goodman, who called a City Hall press conference within hours to respond.

"This president is a real slow learner," he said, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "An apology won't be acceptable this time. . . . I want to assure you when he comes I will do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington and to visit his failures back there."

Goodman, an Independent who left the Democratic Party, was similarly steamed a year ago when Obama said in a speech that Wall Street bankers receiving bailout money should not take trips to Las Vegas "on the taxpayers' dime."

The mayor was not the only Nevada official to fire away at the president yesterday. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the entire congressional delegation sent word to the White House that tourism is the struggling city's lifeblood, and rebukes from the commander-in-chief won't help bring the local economy back from the recession.

Obama promptly apologized with a letter to Reid, saying he only that meant families should use vacation dollars, not tuition dollars, to have fun, adding, "There is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country's great destinations."

As luck would have it, the president will get to test that theory for himself. He's scheduled to visit Vegas in two weeks.