I wonder how quickly the secret service would have extricated him from the room had a crazed gunman been reported in the grounds, whether or not it alarmed the little people.
Good thing he wasn’t reading Lord of the Flies.
What? Do you think the President just spontaneously appears at public events with no advance notice?
There’s an official website telling you where the President will be. (Obama is having meetings in the White House today.)
Was it declared an ‘attack’ at the first crash into the WTC or did it become more apparent after the second that this was not just a horrible accident?
I ask this in the "at the time’ mode - not the “after the fact it becomes apparent” mode.
(and in genuine earnest - when was it decided that we were ‘under attack’ ?)
The first crash happened before he went to the school. At the time it seemed like it could’ve been an accident, and I haven’t seen Bush criticized for going ahead with the reading/publicity stunt in light of the first crash. But the second crash happened while he was reading, and that’s the 7 minute delay - after the second crash when it was clear that it was an attack - that we’re talking about.
Ok - been so long that I couldnt remember that detail - thanks.
I still don’t have an issue with how he handled it at that moment - I’m reasonably sure his advisors would still have been coming up to speed in those same moments as to what responses were available, etc.
At some point soon he’s going to be called upon to make a decision. At that point, if he’s making that decision responsibly, he’s going to need a bunch of background information, and a bunch of bringing-up-to-speed about all the issues involved. Even if there’s literally nothing meaningful to do at that precise moment, the sooner he starts getting up to speed on all the related issues, the faster he’ll be able to make a decision once there’s a decision to be made.
And even ignoring that whole side of things, there’s the question of what sort of personality and mindset you have to be told “hey, remember how you’re the president of the United States? Well, two airliners just crashed into the world trade center. The country is currently being attacked on its home soil in the most audacious terrorist attack ever. We don’t know how many other crashes there will be” and then sit for SEVEN MINUTES reading to kids. It’s just unbelievable.
I’m not going to debate this - but you grossly overestimate the importance of 5 minutes at that particular point in time AND your using knowledge that was not available at the time as your reasoning. Even though the second crash clearly implied that ‘something bigger was going on’ - the entire event was unprecedented. We simply did not know that “we were under attack” at that moment.
I have plenty of problems with Bush’s decision making and skills overall - but I do not fault him for that particular decision at that particular moment. Nothing he did or could have done ‘at that moment’ (even ordering all planes grounded, etc) would have prevented anything else or made a ‘response’ to the attack - the attack was functionally over at that point.
ETA- the attack was functionally over because all of the 'highjacked planes" were already in the air.
I don’t think it was Bush’s finest moment, but it’s not unbelievable.
It was probably completely out of left field for him, and he was somewhat nonplussed as to what to do first. Reading goat books to little kids is not a big drain on the mind, and you can gather your thoughts while doing it. Which is probably what he was doing.
That said, I would agree that that gathering information would have been more valuable at that point. But no big deal, in the larger scheme of things.
There was no upside to continuing his little press stunt. The “scaring the children” excuse was bullshit. He simply could’ve excused himself.
He could’ve done anything and it would’ve been better. Even just going to a TV that was showing CNN would’ve given him more information than he had at the time. He could’ve been on a conference call with the people in charge of assessing the situation. He could’ve been in route to place with better communications. Anything.
We’re talking about the guy whose most important job is being able to take leadership in a crisis. And you’re all defending that “leadership in a crisis” is reading a fucking book to school children. I can’t even understand how this one isn’t the most obvious thing in the world.
Which is something he didn’t know until later, so it really doesn’t factor in, does it? Whatever it was they whispered into his ear could not possibly be the sum total of the information they had gathered at that point, and even if he decided to sit there and finish his story, it was their responsibility to get him the fuck out of there.
Looking scared, alarmed or completely at a loss doesn’t do anyone any favours, and one of the attributes of leadership is to appear calm in public, even if you are feeling neither calm nor confident.
What is it with this suggestion that his only choices were to finish his story or panic? Have you even bothered to read this thread?
Fair point.
Not to mention that, even if he did jump up and rush out of the room in a vaguely panicky way, then all of 20 people in that room would be alarmed. It’s not like he was on national television at that precise moment. And of course anyone anyone anywhere near a television was already pretty darn panicked.
I completely agree that it’s not a big deal, and attempted to make that point very clearly several times already this thread. What I found so infuriating about the issue at the time was that the Bush supporters (and back in 2004 there WERE Bush supporters, crazy though that seems) seemed unwilling to say “yeah, that was not his finest moment… he kinda choked. But really, it’s not a big deal”, which would have mollified me. Rather they just went on and on and on trying to justify 7 minutes of nonaction, not in a “probably didn’t matter in the long run” sense but in a “every single action he took was utterly fine and you liberals are just looking for reasons to tear him down!” sense. It was a particularly egregious example of reflexive partisanship that (quite clearly) continues to rankle me to this very day.
I think it’s fair to assume that in those 7 minutes, nothing of import could have been done or decided. I’m sure that information was being gathered as to what exactly was happening, where, to whom, etc. If you’ve ever watched “The West Wing” or have any knowledge of how government works, you can safely assume that the everyone behind the scenes wasn’t sitting paralyzed during those 7 minutes, and that once Bush left he doubtless had some type of briefing and began to make decisions based on that info. I would rather he have done as he did because leaping up and leaving would have changed exactly nothing, and may have made things worse if he appeared panicked once video of that morning hit the airwaves. Imagine the propaganda value of the President “running scared”. Sitting calmly while his staff was working behind the scenes was not only forgivable, but maybe beneficial.
Here we go again. :rolleyes:
Yes, how dare I have an opinion. There is no right answer about how he responded, there is only opinion. You’re not right any more that I am.
See post #32, which refers to the false choice of either running around like Chicken Little, or doing absolutely nothing.
See the fact that the President has a staff of hundreds - the Administration is not one man, and the Administration was not “doing nothing” during those 7 minutes.