Then Bush should have gone to the secure communications room -- there is always one near the President -- and gotten information about what was clearly an attack on the country and what he must do. Indeed, Bush had gone into the classroom and carried on with a PR event after being informed of the first crash.
Moreover, Bush -- and more reflective Bush supporters -- should recognize that in the larger scheme of things, the expectations and anxieties of a class of little kids must be seen as of little weight against Bush's constitutional duty as commander in chief. Bluntly put, even if it meant that the kids cried their hearts out for the next month, Bush's most important duty as President required him to leave them immediately.
As President, George W. Bush has many good decisions to his credit. Continuing with a PR event after he learned that the country was under attack was not one of them.
Please don’t pretend to know what Reagan would have done.
Years later the children in that room have said that his handling of them was appropriate to the situation.
100% hindsight will tell you what to do, too late. You weren’t our President and you would have probably jumped up, knocked over chairs, forgot about the kids, and ran hysterically from the room. LAY OFF! He is a human being and was shocked about the situation.
It wasn’t only those kids, it was kids all over the country and everyone else in the country.
I agree the president’s reaction is open to a good healthy discussion. The mistake is giving a ridiculous leftist trumped up controversey one second of your time.
Bush made a decision, the idea he was too dumb to know what to do is preposterous. All evidence is Bush and Cheney took kick ass charge that day and after.
(YAWN)
I’m far from an unqualified supporter of GW Bush but this carping about the FL classroom scene is simply Michael Moore bs and tedious 2nd-guessing.
It is purely a media/Hollywood fantasy that the POTUS could or would make any Commander-in-Chief type of decision in those first 10 min. Bush knew that information was being gathered and whatever immediate actions could or could not be taken were outside of the oversight of the POTUS in the first 10 min.
“PR event” or not, Bush was in front of media and not only children. There was no benefit to the country for him to disappear so fast. Anyway, it was necessarily a “snap” judgment and it is worthless to 2nd-guess him unless there was some clear and compelling reason to act differently.
Only people with some other inherent reason to trash Bush would waste any oxygen still thinking and talking about whether Michael Moore is right after all.
btw, and kindly correct me if I’m wrong on the following, but the question of Pres. Bush in that FL classroom was never any significant issue before the release of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911” in June 2004.
Thus, for nearly 3 years after 9/11 there was no issue about Pres. Bush and the first 7-9 minutes after he was informed of the 2nd plane attack. It was not a “problem” (that I can recall or find in some web searching) until Moore & co. fabricated the issue.
It was purely a propaganda creation of the loathsome excremental Michael Moore.
It is not surprising when the media and international take and run with the propaganda memes of the likes of Michael Moore, but it is totally foolish and unacceptable for “conservatives” to allow themselves to absorb these propaganda points unchallenged.
Disagree.
Guy comes from a large family and has kids of his own. He’s a dad first. I know I am regardless of my other job.
Not sure how long he remained at the school, but the pause gave the secret service time to get him set up.
The fact is, there’s not a thing he could have done to prevent a single attack from occuring that wasn’t already underway.
The other thing an executive realizes is that being on the job means that instead of subordinates carrying out the plan, they are trying to keep the boss informed.
People will monday morning QB his actions to a fare thee well, and the fact is he made it through the day without being killed, and we eventually took the battle to the enemy in a decisive and effective way.
I’ve got no complaints. Unless W had a cape and could fly around the earth very, very fast and reverse time to save the two towers, those towers were coming down.
Huh? A twinkle in his eye? Oh boy. Personally I was fine with the 6 minutes it took for security to plan how to move the president.