Portman gets stood up

White House budget director Rob Portman is a very busy man.

He's especially busy on days like today, when the members of Congress are at an impasse over passing the president's supplemental budget request to pay for U.S. soldiers.

In fact, Portman was in a meeting at the White House with President Bush, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to talk about the budget bill just this afternoon when he had to rush back to his office for another meeting.

He had planned to talk at 4 p.m. with about 45 members of the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, who were in Washington today for their annual lobbying trip.

"I rushed out of the meeting with the president," Portman said, joking that he got stood up.

The Chamber group, apparently running late for their meeting with Portman, and fearing they would miss their 6:15 p.m. Delta flight back to CVG, called to cancel.

Left with a few minutes to spare, the Terrace Park Republican and former Ohio congressman invited reporters from The Enquirer and The Cincinnati Post who had showed up for his meeting with the Chamber group into his office for a chat.

"Life is busy right now," he said, explaining that he's been working nonstop on the budget bill, which the president wants to sign in the next 10 days. "This will be a challenge."

Asked about the Supreme Court ruling upholding the partial birth abortion ban that his former congressional colleague Rep. Steve Chabot worked on, Portman said:

"He always said he believed that this was the constitutional way to do it. So it's a victory for Steve and it's consistent with the precedence as well."

Asked about whether he's been helping the University of Cincinnati land a presidential debate, Portman said that, personally, he wants the city to get a debate, but he has no inside strings to pull, despite being the stand-in for Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Edwards in practice sessions with Vice President Dick Cheney before both of the last two vice presidential debates.

With that, Portman got up and walked into the bathroom.

No kidding.

He emerged a few seconds later carrying a framed poster advertising the Lieberman-Cheney debate held in 2000 in Danville, Ky., on which Cheney had scrawled: "Rob, you were tougher than my opponent."

"It could be a good opportunity for the university and the city," Portman said of the debate. "The importance of Ohio in the last two presidential elections cannot be overstated. We would have a different president in both instances but for Ohio."

Consider this: Wouldn't it be interesting if Cincinnati lands a vice presidential debate - and one of the vice presidential candidates turns out to be a Cincinnati native?