Roger Simon wonders, Where’s Georgie?
Bush Shoots Nation the Bird
Where’s George? The president, I mean.
You remember him. Dubya. No. 43. Won a second term a few years ago. It was in all the papers.
But where has he been lately? Where has he been during America’s worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?
Nowhere. AWOL. Every now and then, when the stock market takes yet another sickening plunge, a few words issue forth from the presidential lips. A very few words. Delivered with the greatest reluctance.
…
George W. Bush will continue to draw a paycheck until noon on Jan. 20, 2009. (If there is still any money left in the U.S. Treasury to pay him, that is.) But what has he been doing to earn his pay lately? Not calming fears among his fellow citizens about their life savings, that’s for sure.
On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 504 points, its worst drop since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Bush did not address the nation that night.
Instead, he held a state dinner for the president of Ghana. Gratin of Maine lobster, late-summer corn pudding, ginger-scented farm lamb and graham cracker crumble with cocoa pod shell was served. Eleven members of the cast of “The Lion King” came down from Broadway and performed. It was quite a bash. The Washington Post described President Bush and Ghanaian President John Kufuor as “ebullient.”
[From President Bush goes AWOL – Roger Simon – Politico.com]
On the one hand, George McBush has damaged the country enough over these seven years of famine, but on the other hand, he still is the putative head of our government, and should at least pretend to be working. Sets a bad example for the easily influenced. I thought he was worried about his legacy?
and then there’s this aspect:
The stock market swoons, home prices fall, job losses mount. But the president does not want to talk about it. Not really. And he certainly does not want to take any questions about it.
He has not taken any questions on anything since Aug. 6. On Wednesday his press secretary, Dana Perino, explained why. “If you guys [i.e., reporters] had him in here, almost everything would be geared towards the election, and he is cognizant of that,” Perino said. “I mean, every time that I would think about maybe having a press conference, the news of the day would be such that we might be talking about lipstick on a pig, and the president is just not going to get involved in it.”
In other words, the president is not going to get involved with restoring public confidence in our financial system because he is afraid somebody might ask him a question about politics. And because he doesn’t want to talk about politics (and why doesn’t he, considering he is supporting John McCain?), he won’t talk about anything.