GWB has great judgment and intuition. To sit there and finish up what he was doing made perfect sense. But you are right--it wouldn't have mattered what he had done that day, it wouldn't have been right in the eyes of his detractors. Thanks for sharing that picture (and I suspect that I have seen it before, but I don't recall it).
Another pic of the African children. I had this photo on my computer at school for months. I love all those little hands welcoming him.
It's understandable to not recall it, because the other one with Card is the more famous shot. This one comes a moment or two later in the sequence of photos the media were all snapping at the time. You may never have seen a still of this moment before, just the taped clip, which isn't played very often on TV anyway.