Goading into Action was Necessary
NEW YORK Appearing on the Larry King show on CNN Monday night, former President George H.W. Bush defended his son against criticism for his response to the hurricane disaster, suggesting it was mainly media-generated.
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Asked about the criticism, the former president said, "I think any time there's a crisis people want to blame someone. I've never been much for the Monday morning quarterbacking and to be very candid, Larry, I think some of the criticism had been grossly unfair, particularly when they suggest the president doesn't care and all of that.['George H.W. Bush: Media Unfairly Slamming My Son (Paging "Mr. Sulzberger")', Editor & Publisher, 6 September 2005.]
While Pappy is right that there has been a lot of criticism of his boy over the Katrina issue, his implication that the criticism was unnecessary, uncalled for, and unfair is way off the mark.
As far as one can tell, it was only because of 4 solid days of outcry, indignation, horror, incredulity, and criticism directed at the President and the Bush League that they finally, finally, finally stopped vacationing so they could be seen to be returning to work. (I say that because it's not clear that any of them actually did dive back into doing anything useful, but there were ample photo-ops.)
Petitioning the government for redress is one thing; yelling and screaming at them to do what they should be doing is another. If anything, last week's criticism of the so-called administration fell short for taking so long to work, with no evidence yet that it has had any lasting effect.