It’s hard to see how you can read these comments by President George Bush during his tour of the death and destruction left by Hurricane Katrina today and not wonder if he doesn’t get it:
We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we’re going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we’re going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)
Does he sound like Winston Churchill? No (it’s not grandiose, not inspiring and will not echo throughout history but will be played a lot on Jon Stewart’s show).
Like FDR? No (it’s not PC to say that it’s tasteless and ignores the death and destruction; it’s as if FDR joked about Hitler being a real gas).
Like JFK, LBJ, or Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, or Gerald Ford, or Bill Clinton, or Jimmy Carter, or Harry Truman, or Dwight Eisenhower — or the first President George Bush?
No.
Given the current context — with the bloated bodies, perhaps thousands killed, people without food, water or a place to pee in the Superdome, the lootings, the slow state, local and federal help, plus the prospect that New Orleans may never really rise again — it’s truly in a class by itself.
And we should all be thankful for that.
UPDATE: Apparently TMV isn’t the only one who reacted this way. Read this, this, this, and this.
UPDATE II: We just read our highly talented co-blogger Greg Piper’s post on his own great site on seeing Bush on TV (yours truly was driving 450 miles today and couldn’t see it). READ IT HERE and you can see more evidence of the “vibes” Bush is giving out — which are not that of a typical President during a big national crisis or disaster. (QUESTION: Is Karl Rove on vacation, too?)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.