The President invites 12 NASCAR stars to the White House...but Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart, and Greg Biffle say no, they're too busy

  President Obama honors NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson at the White House (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
  

   (Updated with driver reaction)

   By Mike Mulhern
   mikemulhern.net

   ATLANTA
   President Barack Obama will host NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and half a dozen stock car racing stars at the White House Wednesday Sept. 7th, and NASCAR CEO Brian France.
   When the President of the United States offers such an invitation, it is such an honor that it is difficult to see anyone turning it down.
   However in what would appear to be a snub to the President, NASCAR officials said Thursday that five NASCAR stars – Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle and Kurt Busch – said they cannot attend, citing 'schedule conflicts.' There are so far not many specifics on why those are skipping the Presidential invitation.
   Kurt Busch said Friday he would indeed be going to the White House, and said that was his plan all along, just that he had to make some scheduling adjustments first. A NASCAR press release Thursday said he was one of the five drivers who would miss the White House event.
    Kurt Busch called the President's invitation "an honor and a privilege.
   "We'll be there next Wednesday. I mean, who would turn down the opportunity to go to the White House?
    "To me, it's an honor and it's a privilege.
     "I've had the chance to meet (President) Bush and (President) Obama in the past.
     "To be a chase driver and go to the White House…it's an important visit, because I might not make the chase every year, and I'll miss out on those opportunities."

   Johnson, Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Jeff Burton, Denny Hamlin and Clint Bowyer will attend the 4 p.m. affair, which is in part to honor them for last year's championship chase, on the eve of the kickoff of this year's chase.

    Kenseth, one of the men with a great shot at winning the championship, says getting the White House 'tour' with the President "is pretty cool.
   "I've been fortunate to be there before, and it's pretty cool…especially the first time I got to go up there. 
    "I think it's the most fun to go as the champion.  In my opinion, it's to honor the champion --so I'm going for Jimmie and NASCAR, to help support him and congratulate him."

   Denny Hamlin shaking hands with President Obama in 2009, as Dale Earnhardt Jr. (L) and Jeff Burton look on (Photo: NASCAR)
  

  Harvick, one of the four NASCAR drivers skipping the White House invitation, declined to say what he had lined up for next Wednesday instead:
   "I don't think that is anyone's business," Harvick said.
    "It is just one of those things where we have so many things going on that particular week leading up to the chase.
    "It is just a bad week for us to be committed to more than one thing, to go up the day before we have to be in Richmond.
    "This time of year there is just a lot going on. Most everything we do is scheduled months in advance.
    "I have been to the White House before, and it is an honor just to go to the White House and be in the Oval Office, and on the premises at the White House.
   "I understand the honor.
    "Just with everything we have going on right now there is no way possible to reschedule the things that we have going next week."
    Stewart too was not specific about what he had planned that would keep him from shaking hands with the President:
   "If I could have rescheduled, I would have been there in a heartbeat, because I've not missed one yet.
   "I'm very regretful I'm not going to be able to make it. But it's a tough schedule we have.
   "Trust me, if we could be there, we would definitely be there. It's a pretty cool feeling to be with the most powerful man in the world.
   "That's not an invitation you take lightly."
   Stewart says he's been to the White House five times in his career.

   Biffle was not happy over the situation: "I'm disgusted by the comments I see – that people say we 'rejected'…..
    "For one, that's disrespectful, for people not knowing why I can't go.
   "I've got a picture of myself and the President, Barack Obama, on my bookshelf in my office, shaking hands at the White House. I've been there and I've done that, and I respect that.
   "I was very flattered to get the invitation.
    "I got the invitation less than two weeks ago to go…and I've got a function I'm obligated to be at with (sponsor) 3M in Minnesota that they've had planned for basically nine months. It's an annual thing…but they have over 100 of their business people and customers at that, for two days. We arrive Wednesday morning early, and I don't get to Richmond until late Thursday night.
   "I called them and talked about the invitation. And this was very important to them because the function is designed around me, and they really can't have it if I don't go.
   "Does that mean I refuse to go?
   "It's kind of discouraging to see those comments when somebody doesn't know the circumstance.
   "If I hadn't been (to the White House) and hadn't met him (the President) and shook his hand and been in the Oval Office with him before, I might try to chisel my sponsor a little harder to let me go.
    "And I don't want to put it on them; it's simply I have an obligation that I accepted long before this.
   "I would love to go….and it may be the last time I ever get invited.
   "I've been to Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) seven years in a row. Things like this are important to me."

  Kurt Busch and President Bush (Photo: NASCAR)
 

    Kurt Busch pointed to a hectic few weeks ahead, as part of the championship playoff marketing NASCAR executives have planned: "The week after Richmond is booked solid from NASCAR with the media, where I've got to go to Miami (site of the season finale).
   "Some drivers have to go all the way out to Phoenix (for chase marketing); some drivers have to go up to Loudon, N.H. They (NASCAR executives) want a driver that's in the chase to go to each of the chase markets we're going to (before the chase begins).
    "Then you go to the week after Chicago (the September 18th playoff opener), and we're already scheduled….
   "It's tough – busy schedules for everybody."
    And tensions among many of these drivers are already high, for what's going on out on the track. No wonder there is also testiness over all these media appearances around the country that NASCAR execs have planned for them too.
    At least Ryan Newman could laugh about some of it:
    Newman was asked if drivers in this sport have simply become so jaded that when the President of the United States calls up and issues an invite to the White House it's too easy to respond 'We can't make it this week; maybe next week?'
    "Who said that?" Newman responded.
    His own boss, Tony Stewart.
   "I didn't know," Newman said.
   "We do have schedules and obligations…so there are things that we have predetermined  before you get that phone call."
   So Newman would be willing to say 'no' to the President?
   "Would I be be willing to? I am being very careful with every word that you say in your question, because one word can be misconstrued quite easily," Newman warily replied.
   Then Newman was just asked the general question about his thoughts about why so many NASCAR drivers would just say no.
   "Was it date night, or ice cream night?" Newman replied with a laugh, apparently hoping to dance around the issue.
   "I am asking a question to your question….because I'm more curious as to why they aren't going," Newman went on.
   Newman, for his part, is going to Washington, D.C. next week, but not to the White House (he wasn't one of the men specifically invited), rather to the Pentagon and then Walter Reed, at the invitation of one of his chief sponsors, the U.S. Army.
   "I am going……unless we get a fresh truck of ice cream come through Statesville," Newman said with another laugh.