Saturday, September 24, 2005
ODEL begins his round of Rita photo-ops.
After being stymied by the sunshine in San Antonio, Our Dear Embattled Leader scurried off to the Northern Command in Colorado. There, amongst all the military and their hardware, he got a bunch of passable photos. Now with Rita on land and the worst of the storm over, he is in full photo-op mode.
President Bush hopscotched the country from one high-tech disaster command center to another Saturday, declaring himself satisfied with the government's response to the latest monster hurricane.Hmm, hopscotch. Probably not as much fun as cutting brush. He did manage to sneak in one trenchent quote to go with the photos.
Seeking to project a take-charge role on Hurricane Rita, Bush tracked its assault on Texas and Louisiana from a situation room at the U.S. Northern Command headquarters in the Rocky Mountain foothills more than 1,000 miles away from the storm's landfall, and then flew to two towns in Texas central to the response.
Nearly six hours after Rita struck the coastline, Bush — surrounded by plasma screens and slide projections — got a detailed briefing on the federal plan to deal with the possibility of heavy flooding in eastern Texas and western Louisiana, additional spills from levees in and around New Orleans, and disruptions to U.S. energy supplies.
After an hourlong briefing, the president said: "It comforts me knowing that our federal government is well-organized and well-prepared to deal with Rita."And why do we see this flurry of activity from a man who has no idea what he is being shown?
The last-minute scurrying to set up photo opportunities for Bush showed the White House in crisis-management mode. With his approval ratings lower than ever, he has suffered from the perception that both he and his administration responded too slowly to Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Mississippi coast and southeastern Louisiana nearly a month ago.Still, it's a shame they keep dragging him away from his good buddies Jack, Jim and Jose.
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