NYT brings out snark for Bush Rita trip

David E. Sanger of the New York Times gives us a peek inside his "Reporter's Notebook" and describes Bush's trip to Colorado and other locations to observe the response to Hurricane Rita. From "In This Storm, White House Tries to Take New Tack":

But unlike the events that have defined his presidency so far - the response to Sept. 11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq - the reality was that there weren't many decisions for the president to make. Rescue and recovery is very different than retaliation and war.

Say what now? I thought that during Katrina Bush was supposed to have immediately flown to New Orleans and started driving a bus. Instead, there's very little for him to do? I'm confused.

No matter. As the country's attention was fixed on its television sets, Mr. Bush was pictured in command centers, a deliberate effort by the White House to strike a different image than the one that dominated a month ago. Here in the state capital, the second of three stops in sun-splashed cities that missed Hurricane Rita's wrath, Mr. Bush headed to the underground Emergency Operations Center, run by the Texas Department of Public Safety...
Partly because Mr. Bush did not want to add to those clogged highways, he stayed away from Houston and the rest of the affected region...

As previously pointed out, "liberals" want it both ways. They wanted Bush to show up in New Orleans immediately, but when he did they complained that he disrupted recovery efforts.

But however tantalizingly close, the ranch [previously referred to as "his beloved ranch"] was clearly off-limits on this trip. The last night Mr. Bush spent there was just after the levees broke in New Orleans. While he returned to Washington the next day, flying over the flooded city on the way, his initial presence at the ranch and images of him viewing the disaster from the climate-controlled comfort of Air Force One reinforced the image of a leader detached. No one could afford that on Saturday...
...In the past Mr. Bush has told reporters how much he has come to rely on the "secure video telecommunications system" at the White House, which allows him to talk to commanders in Baghdad or to Prime Minister Tony Blair in London. He had the system installed on Air Force One, at Camp David and in a trailer across the dirt road from his ranch.
On Saturday, he tapped into it in Colorado Springs for hurricane coordination, bringing in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military commanders in Louisiana and Texas. He also brought in officials at the White House situation room, a 45-second stroll from the Oval Office. But for Mr. Bush, this was one conference he couldn't conduct from the comfort of home.