Bush Arrives on the Coast and Looks Uninterested

I saw Bush's obviously staged briefing when he arrived in Mobile Alabama this morning (about 11:25am ET). He looked remarkably uninterested (arms crossed, no eye contact, uninterested nodding, starring off into the distance) while hearing the reports. He only said two things at this point. When the Director of FEMA said 500 cell phone towers were down, he asked if any were put back up yet (yes). When the Gov of Alabama said some oil pipelines were working up to 40-50% of capacity Bush interrupted and said: "It's more than that right now. I got positive news on the Colonial Pipeline. It should be over 80% this weekend which will help". Now two things bother me with this. One, he knows the details of the oil situation, does he care about anything else? And two, he seems to confuse "right now" with "this weekend".

At the end Bush said a few words including these: "The good news is and it's hard for some to see it now, but out of this chaos is gonna come a fantastic gulf coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles [sic] of Trent Lott's house, his [sic] had lost his entire house, there's gonna be a fantastic house and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. Out of New Orleans is gonna come that great city again, that's what gonna happen." Is anyone else disturbed that he listed Trent Lott's house before New Orleans?

I watched on CNN and Daryn Kagan said after this speech. "I gotta say that was rather an odd thing to be watching. The president finally making it to the gulf coast after five days and then spending a big chunk of time, when he could be out seeing the devastation, getting a briefing that frankly he could have gotten back at the White House, if not then, then on board on Air Force One. A lot of that seemed like a political opportunity for the cameras and for the Republican governors of Mississippi and Alabama." Political Analyst William Schneider said: "Well it did and I'm not sure that's what most Americans [mumble] most people in the area wanted to hear as if the president were being filled in being told what was going on, there was a lot of thanking a lot of congratulations. Look these are frantic desperate people who have lost everything, who are in a very desperate situation. What they want is someone to come there and say the government is in control, we have control of this situation, there's a leader in charge here and we're going to make it work. Eventually he did get to his point and his point was that his priorities were the right priorities, number one saving lives, number two restoring order. But what people want there is leadership, they don't want someone being briefed, they want leadership.