Hey, don't blame me, I wuz on vacashun!
"The President’s incuriosity, his prideful insistence on being an underbriefed 'gut player,' is not looking so charming right now, if it ever did."
What? You mean the take-action, gun-slingin' sherriff looks more like the stupid, stammering sidekick? Well duh!
Obviously, a hurricane is beyond human blame, and the political miscalculations that have come to light - the negligent planning, the delayed rescue and aid efforts, the thoroughly confused and uninspired political leadership - cannot all be laid at the feet of President Bush.
But you could sense, watching him being interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC’s Good Morning America - defensive, confused, overwhelmed - that he knew that he had delivered a series of feeble, vague, almost flippant speeches in the early days of the crisis, and that the only way to prevent further political damage was to inoculate himself with the inevitable call for non-partisanship: “I hope people don’t play politics during this period of time.”
And yet, to a frightening degree, Bush’s faults of leadership and character were brought into high relief by the crisis. Suntanned and relaxed after a vacation so long that it would have shamed a French playboy, Bush reacted with fogged delinquency.
But you could sense, watching him being interviewed by Diane Sawyer on ABC’s Good Morning America - defensive, confused, overwhelmed - that he knew that he had delivered a series of feeble, vague, almost flippant speeches in the early days of the crisis, and that the only way to prevent further political damage was to inoculate himself with the inevitable call for non-partisanship: “I hope people don’t play politics during this period of time.”
And yet, to a frightening degree, Bush’s faults of leadership and character were brought into high relief by the crisis. Suntanned and relaxed after a vacation so long that it would have shamed a French playboy, Bush reacted with fogged delinquency.
- David Remnick, the New Yorker.
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