Jamie's take on the 2004 Election... — Page 2

"He sat there for seven minutes with a dumb 'deer in the headlights' look on his face when this country was under attack!"

This is looking for every little thing possible to criticize about George Bush. Believe me, I have no intention of voting for him. He is trampling on my right to fair and equal treatment because of his close-minded religious beliefs, but for John Kerry to critize his cautious reaction to truly horrific news is
petty. If he had immediately jumped up and ran out of the room half-c0cked, he still would have been criticized.

Updated On: 9/2/04 at 01:14 PM

George W Bush manipulated the 9/11 support he received into a war he wanted to finish in his Father's name.

That's a relatively large leap. Unless you are in the man's head, you should not assume that he was avenging daddy. Some people here look up to you, so don't make crap up...

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This argument is the most foolish of them all. It has been proven that there was nothing he could have done in that whisp of time. The countries defense was in action, F-18's were in the air... Of the two options, many of us may have done the same thing.

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ckeaton, I tend to agree with you. I also wish that Bill Mahrer would either give that line a rest or seek some party's nomination for public office and try his hand at fulfilling a public trust obligation. I'm no fan of Bush/Cheney, but don't see how the incessant Monday morning quarterbacking is productive.

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Christopher,

What did you do that morning when you first heard about it? Every person I know ran to a tv or tried to call someone to find out information. Shouldn't we expect that our President would want to know what's going on?

No...I can safely say that I would not have done the same thing. At all.

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But you followed your instinct...like everybody else that day.

It just scares me that his instinct is 'Lemme just sit here for a minute...or seven.'

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i probably would have finished what i was doing as quickly as possible, then gotten out of there.

and gone where and done what? this is the leader of the free world we're talking about, folks, he has access to a maybe just a few resources that your average joe on the street might not so it's likely he didn't feel the need to find the nearest wi-fi eneabled laptop and start surfing the net or to call mom and dad to see if they had made an unscheduled visit to the wtc that day. while there were only 16 students in that room who would have seen the president cut short a visit, there were on the other hand close to 150 members of the press, staff, secret service, etc. so it's safe to assume that any move he made would have been documented and he had to know that. so he sat and as students went through their lesson he deliberated on his response and the enormity of what happened. you can argue that he should not have ever sat down with the students in the first place knowing that a plane had hit one of the towers, but that's taking issue with the general decency of the man himself and would be like asking a camel to quit spitting. it's just not in his nature. but knowing that you are the president of the united states and that you have arguably (at least in your view) the best minds available working on this, what's the best thing to do? make a hasty exit and cut short your visit or trust that the people with whom you've chosen to surround yourself are doing their jobs and can handle the situation until you can calmly and unobtrusively extricate yourself from the current situation. not to mention that you have a few minutes to digest the news without facing questions. it's easy to say what someone else would have or should have or could have done in a specific situation, but i'm satisfied with what he did once he left the classroom, which is what i find more important.

and epo, are you suggesting that the president himself shopuld have left to classroom to direct the rescue operation himself or that he is in some way responsible for the decisions that were made on the ground that day by the rescue workers?

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Updated On: 9/2/04 at 03:49 PM

Really? There's who knows how many civilians in the tallest building in NY in danger, and that's not important enough to leave? As soon as I saw it, one of the things I thought about is how is the building going to fall because fall, it did, hours later.

Hear Hear Papa! As I hinted to earlier, the blame game on the back of the attacks is an endless one.

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Well, I am guessing plane crashes into a highly populated area is not an everyday occurrence. I mean, as soon as the first one hit, people were already speculating terrorism around me. He should have been out there finding out what was going on.

he should have been out there finding out what was going on.

well, that's a specific response. don't you think that the entire national security apparatus just maybe was doing exactly that? don't you think that maybe, just maybe, an executive made a decision to let the people he'd hired to do specific jobs do them and further decided to give them the time to do them? what good would it do to get on the phone and start calling people and interrupting them from the business of getting the answers that they know you want (as anyone would want) to tell them, "hey, i need these answers!" it's trusting the people you've hired to do their jobs to actually do them and giving them the chance to do them.

the only thing that does is slow down the entire process. sure it looks good to be on the phone shouting orders and telling people what they need to be doing, but if you've set up and effective team and procedures (and i'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that the president expected that he had done just that) you let them do their jobs and trust them to know what to do without you having to micro-manage. that's how to effectively manage.

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Well, clearly Bush is a dolt for a lot more than his response on 9/11. I think we are safe to move beyond that and get to the the other points on the list ... deficit anyone? constitutional amendments banning gay marriage? environmental issues? health care? haliburton? lack of voting rights for DC?

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