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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.

Again, you are engaged in precious 2nd-guessing of a tedious nature. The WH had been evacuated the morning of 9/11 within minutes, with reason to believe another plane was headed for a crash assault there (Flight 93 which crashed in PA was headed for DC and no one at the time could know what its target might be or if there were more planes and/or other forms of attack underway or imminent).

Playing “Churchill in the Blitz” for the media without knowing the most elementary facts would not help anything. Bush did in fact return to DC by that evening, I believe, but the idea that he should rush there in the first hours is just silly.

I was in the heart of Manhattan on 9/11 (working in a mid-town skyscraper looking out at the WTC burning and collapsing a couple of miles down the island). No one knew then how many more attacks might be imminent on both NYC and DC, or other places, but in those first hours and days it was certainly more important to know that our govt was still functioning to some degree than to believe that the POTUS was rushing into the firing line to share our dangers.

Oh, did Churchill stay in London every day during WWII? Did he walk the streets during bombings? The attacks had just started, the White House was a target, the Pentagon was hit. No, you don’t tell the president to go stand under a falling jetliner. Protecting your top leaders is a priority and I can assure you Churchill was protected. getting the president killed in the first few hours of a surprise attack is not bravery. There was no “whiff of cowardice” about GWB.