On the June 1 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, New York Civil Rights Coalition (NYCRC) president and executive director Michael Meyers suggested that former President Bill Clinton failed to appoint African-Americans to “real jobs” in his administration, asserting that Clinton's appointments of minorities were merely “window dressing” compared with the prominent minority appointments by President Bush. In fact, Clinton's court and cabinet appointments of minorities far exceeded those by any president before him, and African-Americans apparently constituted a higher percentage of Clinton's appointments than Bush's among positions that do not require Senate confirmation.

NBC News quantified the dramatic increase in minority cabinet and court appointments under Clinton in December 2000:

Where his predecessor, George [H.W.] Bush, could find only one qualified woman, one African-American and two Hispanics for his Cabinet, Clinton nominated three black men, a black woman and two Hispanic men to join nine white Cabinet nominees -- three of them women. George W. Bush's push for diversity in his own Cabinet this year [2000] can be seen as an affirmation of Clinton's work on that front. ... In [former President Ronald] Reagan and [George H.W.] Bush's 12 years in office, of the 545 federal judicial appointments, 65 were women, 22 Hispanic, two Asian American and 17 African American. In Clinton's eight years, of 366 federal judicial appointments, 104 were women, 23 Hispanic, five Asian American, one American Indian, and 61 African American.

Further, although George W. Bush has nominated minorities for some of the highest positions in government (such as former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, former national security adviser and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales), a Newsday analysis of federal personnel records for September 2000 and September 2002 concluded that when political appointments that don't require Senate confirmation are counted, "[b]lacks held 7 percent of administration jobs under Bush, less than half of the 16 percent they held under Clinton," and blacks held only 6 percent of “senior executive posts” under Bush, compared to 13 percent under Clinton.

When co-host Alan Colmes mentioned that Clinton appointed an African-American as secretary of labor (Alexis Herman), Meyers refused to acknowledge that as a “real job,” even though he included similar Cabinet-level positions such as secretary of transportation and secretary of commerce as examples of “real jobs” to which Bush has appointed minorities. When Colmes noted that Clinton also appointed an African-American as commerce secretary (Ron Brown), Meyers downplayed the appointment: “You've got one black.”

Meyers, a former assistant director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has clashed with the organization on multiple occasions and called the group “a satellite of the Democratic Party” [The Washington Post, 3/3/02]. He also is a former columnist for the New York Post.

From the June 1 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:

SEAN HANNITY (co-host): [I]t's the Republican Party that is reaching out, putting African-Americans in positions of power that they've never seen in history.

MEYERS: Into real jobs.

HANNITY: Real positions of power.

COLMES: Wasn't a real job, secretary of labor? That was a real job?

MEYERS: I'll tell you what a real job is: the attorney general of the United States is a real job.

HANNITY: Secretary of state.

MEYERS: Secretary of state is a real job. Secretary of commerce is a real job. Secretary of transportation is a real job. Counsel to the president of the United States is a real job.

[...]

COLMES: Ron Brown was already head of the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. Ron Brown is black. When Clinton was president, he was also commerce secretary. To suggest that Democrats do not recognize black Americans --

MEYERS: You've got one black. You just mentioned one black in two positions.

COLMES: Also, when Bill Clinton was president, jobs for blacks went up. Highest employment ever for blacks.

MEYERS: Blacks are good for symbolism. And I'm not saying the Democrats -- Democrats are not good for window dressing. Window dressing jobs and one-time, first-time blacks, yes. But look at President Bush's record. Look at President Bush's record --

COLMES: That's particularly inaccurate, inaccurate based on what Clinton did in terms of number of blacks he put in office.