Paul Waldman is the past associate director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center
******
Paul Waldman: One of the things that’s so shocking, if we can just digress on that for a moment, is that everyone talks about his (Pres Bush) tremendous performance on 9/11. I don’t think it was that tremendous. He got informed of the second plane – okay, not the first plane – the second plane. He knew that America was under attack, and he stayed in that classroom for 10 more minutes. Ari Fleischer held up a sign that said: “Don’t say anything yet,” and so Bush went on reading this children’s book for 10 more minutes instead of saying, “I’m sorry children. I have to go.” He hung around as if it really wasn’t all that urgent.
And then he kind of bounced around the country, making very awkward statements that didn’t really seem to be very inspiring. It wasn’t until they could actually write something for him to say that he began to take on the appearance of a President.
yeah, for ten whole minutes. /sarc
As for the rest, he was being moved out of harm’s way until we knew what the hell was going on. No one knew after the Pentagon strike how many planes were involved or what other targets might be hit. Since we managed to land all the planes with great speed, we still don’t know how many others carried terrorists who were unable to execute.
The reason Bush was ‘bouncing around the country’ was because THE ENEMY was trying to knock Air Force One out of the sky.
This guy needs Christopher Walkin to drive him to the airport.