EXACTLY the point I was trying to make; you said it MUCH better than I did.
Besides, as I've explained elsewhere, The President/VP et al can't GO to Georgia until National Security greenlights it. You do NOT send a sitting President into an actively Hostile combat zone. It's just not wise to do this; no matter how "good" it would look.
President goes, some itchy trigger finger gets busy, hits the President; Plausible Deniability by Russia, or any other "party". We are then automatically at war.
How convenient would that be for Iran and the Axis; And of course, the "Bush haters".