You can be among all the state level GOP leaders you want, the country was under attack and Washington DC specifically so, and the secret service made the correct decision (IMHO) to take the president elsewhere.
Once again people fall for an inappropriate reaction by the left wing democrat phonies. All GOPers should have been busy smashing any such “political” criticism in the democrats’ faces. But republicans are feckless.
That is the GOP’s “political error”.
An American President is not a box of glassware to be carted about as the Secret Service directs for safety’s sake. Despite any dangers, Bush needed to return to Washington on 9/11 because, like Churchill in London during the Blitz, when the country is under attack, a President must at least symbolically share the risks and fate of his government and people. America can survive losing a President to hostile action more readily than it can survive a wartime President about whom there is a whiff of cowardice.