The people who saw Meet the Press this morning are not likely to forget the brutal honesty TV can bring. It will be remembered long after all the carefully-staged Presidential photo ops are forgotten.
Jefferson Parish President, Aaron Broussard, told through tears a story of desperate people who believed that federal leaders were working urgently to bring aid.
From Meet The Press
"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for
everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night."
In fact, from the top there was no sense of emergency during the critical day leading up to the disaster or the two days after the disaster. It took three days for Bush to end his vacation.
The woman in the nursing home, and the thousands like her, did not have three days to wait for the leader the country to decide come back from vacation and make sure that people were working through the night (like he should have).
No matter what Bush does now it's too late for them.