Bush lingered until the press was gone [from the classroom]. Then he turned to Tose-Rigell [the principal], who was waiting to take him to the library for his speech on education. He pulled her aside for the first private conversation in this new phase of his presidency."I'm so sorry," he said. "But a tragedy has occurred."
The president told her of the second plane crash and explained that there would be no speech on education. Instead, he would need to use her school as the site of his first postattack remarks to the nation.
"I'm going to have to address some things," he said. "I really wish it would have been a different set of circumstances."
"I fully understand," Tose-Rigell said. . . .
As Tose-Rigell conversed with Bush, she sensed that a transformation had taken place. The man she had viewed as a phony just minutes earlier was now calmly apologizing for the fact that his planned education speech at her school would have to be scrapped because, after all, America is under attack. She was astonished by his heartfelt sincerity, especially since Bush hadn't had time privately to gather his wits.
"That's not something that you can fake," she told me later. "I'm telling you, I was very impressed. I don't know what spurred him on. I don't know if he tapped into his faith. I don't know if there were people around the country praying for him.
"But at that moment in time, he was very, very composed," she said. "All I can say is he looked very presidential."
Thus did Gwendolyn Tose-Rigell, an African-American principal of an inner-city school, a Democrat who had worked for Al Gore, become the first of many people across America and around the world to conclude that George W. Bush was somehow profoundly changed by the terrible events of September 11.
"From that point on," she said, "I was a convert."
Taken from Chapter Three, page 91, Fighting Back, by Bill Sammon.