Posted on 07/29/2011 2:21:29 AM PDT by markomalley
George W Bush says his blank reaction to the first news of the Sept 11 attacks while US president was a conscious decision to project an aura of calm in a crisis.
In a rare interview with the National Geographic Channel, Mr Bush reflected on what was going through his mind when he was informed that a second passenger jet had hit New York's World Trade Center.
Mr Bush was visiting a Florida classroom at the time, and the incident - which was caught by television cameras - has often been used by critics to ridicule his apparently dazed response to the attack
"My first reaction was anger. Who the hell would do that to America? Then I immediately focused on the children, and the contrast between the attack and the innocence of children," Mr Bush said.
Mr Bush said he could see journalists at the back of the classroom getting the news on their own cellphones "and it was like watching a silent movie."
Mr Bush said he quickly realised that a lot of people beyond the room would be watching for his reaction.
"So I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn't want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm," he said of his decision to remain seated and silent.
"I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing a leader has to do is to project calm," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I’m trying to figure out how, when the face is frozen, but the eyes are basically saying what he says he was thinking, i.e. “WTF? Bastards!”...how that’s a blank look. It’s not. If you think that’s blank, you’re just not paying attention.
Suffice it to say that the vast majority of sane Americans will find not fault with his reaction that day. Most of us really don't require the calm ministrations of our Supreme Leader to help us through difficult times. I'm not surprised that idiot leftists always seek an authoritative father figure to help make sense of things.
Obviously this is something you feel pretty strongly about.
Among idiot leftists.
And you, if you're still here.
Start asking questions about who was attacking the country and what needed to be done — which is what he eventually did.
I have learned from you to rue the disastrous consequences of that 6 minute delay.
Evidently he was supposed to run screaming out of the room and go see if he could spend those minutes outside, interfering with the smooth operation of the security preparations and fresh sweeps and reassignments that were probably hurriedly taking place for his movement.
I can see security thinking that the classroom had been carefully chosen and secured, and that they did not want him to leave that security bubble until they reevaluated and tightened the conditions outside of that carefully researched and prepared classroom setting.
Plus of course the calm heads that would have known that short of being under gunfire, they were going to spend a few minutes disengaging from the civilian setting because nothing was to be gained by freaking out the children and the civilian situation, now THAT would have been historical, and would have lived in infamy.
I think that as a matter of temperament and personality, Bush was at times inert and incurious — poor qualities in an executive. Bush also seemed to prefer to stick to scheduled activities even when his time would have been better used meeting immediate challenges.
Executives don't run around trying to look heroic.
But again, make no mistake: whenever I think only idiot leftists criticize Bush for 9/11, I'll have to remember you do too.
That seems to have been Bush’s philosophy in many respect, with Bush appointing the unqualified Michale Brown to head FEMA, and then backing him up even after Katrina. So also did Bush keep Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense when his removal before the 2006 election would probably have saved the Republican House majority.
Nobody was complaining about Brownie when Florida handled all of their hurricanes the year before without any problems.
Not only does Florida know hurricanes, but we had the benefit of Jeb Bush as Governor and able to get federal cooperation with a phone call to his older brother.
In other words, Florida didn’t have a governor who got their marching orders from the DNC in order to sabotage President Bush.
LOL, so you just don’t like Bush?
Bush could have overwhelmed or overridden Blanco’s obstructionism, as was eventually done after much political damage had been incurred. Bush’s photo ops while on vacation immediately after Katrina hit and the photo op flyover of flooded New Orleans were self-inflicted wounds — and all the worse because they were unnecessary.
Good point, I’m surprised that he didn’t check his watch, give a wicked chuckle and twirl his moustache in satisfaction.
Well there was that little pesky thing called 'The Constitution', but hey, it's just a living breathing document, right?
And order in some champagne and escargot.
Is someone on the thread, you think, having daddy issues? /lol
Bush himself has been critical of his flying over New Orleans instead of visiting it. In his memoir, he wrote, "At some point, our press team ushered photographers into the cabin. I barely noticed them at the time; I couldn't take my eyes off the devastation below. But when the pictures were released, I realized I had made a serious mistake."
Are you not aware that the MSM, Oprah, Chicago, Landrieu, Blank-o, Nagin and God knows how may other commies set this up for Kanye West to turn W into the black-people-hatingest president since Jefferson Davis?
Did you somehow miss this 25-year, multi-national 10 Billion dollar plan to inject Zero into the Residency?
Do you even READ FR?
So, that means that Bush did not make mistakes?
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