Washington ? Since the days of Warren Harding, presidents have met at the White House with leaders of the NAACP. Not President Bush — at least not yet.

More than halfway through his presidency, Bush has yet to receive the nation’s oldest civil rights group or the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights, an umbrella organization.

The president met with the Congressional Black Caucus for just an hour or so during his first month in office, but he has not responded to a half-dozen subsequent requests to meet again.

While Bush, who got only 9 percent of the black vote in 2000, has shunned sit-downs with established black groups, he has reached out to carefully chosen minority audiences and to civil rights advocates less critical of his policies. One example is the National Urban League, whose annual conference in Pittsburgh Bush is addressing today.

NAACP President Kweisi Mfume said he requested meetings with Bush in 2001 and 2002, and “was told politely, in writing, that he’d love to meet, but his schedule just didn’t allow it.”

Political analysts say the president’s re-election effort is not targeting liberal blacks, but wealthy, conservative churchgoing blacks as a way to increase Bush’s share of the black vote this time around.

“It’s outrageous and insulting that he’s not met with the NAACP, and it’s certainly contrary to decades of history,” said Ralph Neas, who was president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for 15 years.