On the Monday night when the levees broke, President Bush he had a pretty big problem at work, and millions of people were depending on him. But, in a display of his legendary personal discipline, he hung his worries on the door knob and got his 8 hours...
FULL POST AFTER THE JUMP
In the spirit of the General Honore, let's cut through the BS: Local, state and federal officials
share the blame for the inept response to Katrina and subsequent flooding.
But die-hard Bushies should forgive most of the country for not focusing on the locals. We don't vote in Louisiana elections, and, quite frankly, the fact that a few local officials weren't quite up to this task isn't very surprising.
Then there's the Federal guy. He got re-elected because he promised us he knew how to deal with big disasters. "I led," he said, maybe three thousand times on the campaign trail last year.
This is not leadership:
At about 8 p.m., [Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco] spoke to Bush. "Mr. President," she said, "we need your help. We need everything you've got."
...There are a number of steps Bush could have taken, short of a full-scale federal takeover, like ordering the military to take over the pitiful and (by now) largely broken emergency communications system throughout the region. But the president, who was in San Diego preparing to give a speech the next day on the war in Iraq, went to bed.
And you know it's true. Evan Thomas is far from an impartial critic, but there are certain Bush faults that we know are true because he's proud of them. For one, he keeps to a rigid schedule, which includes a "bedtime." You remember bedtime, right?
Most adults would love to have one, but the world often gets in the way. Work beckons, people are depending on us, there's a problem keeping us awake.... basically, we have to deal with unforseen events.
On the Monday night when the levees broke, President Bush he had a pretty big problem at work, and millions of people were depending on him. But, in a display of his legendary personal discipline, he hung his worries on the door knob and got his 8 hours.
Another trait: He's a proud non-reader of newspapers and non-watcher of television news. This occasionally elevates the position of White House Staffer to the most crucial post in our government:
Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.
By Friday morning, you'd probably already had your heart broken multiple times and donated $100 to the Red Cross. Our president was seeing footage of the damage, getting a true sense of the disaster, for the first time. Regardless of anything that happened afterward, and regardless of what the locals should have done, THAT'S the national disgrace.