Last week when the White House and Capitol were evacuated thanks to the Cessna scare, I was willing to cut Mr. Bush a little slack for being out bicycling at the time. After all, I’m not one to fault a guy for being out cycling on a nice day. Granted, we’re talking about the supposed most powerful man in the world here, not your average Joe. But whatever.
But today I learn that our “Commander in Chief” wasn’t even aware that (1) 30,000 people in D.C. (including his wife) had been evacuated, (2) the continuity of government plan was initiated, and (3) fighter jets had been scrambled, until 36 minutes after the “all-clear” had given!
Despite the 9/11 Pet Goat fiasco (or more accurately, because of it) this is stunning. You’d think the White House handlers would have learned a lesson and at least attempted to portray the president as being “in charge.” But I guess if you’re in a situation where seconds count, there’s only time for the most essential tasks.
It’s nice to see that the Secret Service did their job and took care of the most essential elements in the Executive Branch during a potential crisis. You know, the people who are really in charge. Meanwhile, I’m sure Mr. Bush enjoyed a nice, peaceful bike ride.
UPDATE: Commenters at AMERICAblog are contending this only illustrates that the Cessna scare wasn’t a real emergency. Maybe so. At the time, I thought all the brouhaha was an overreaction to a high-flying Cessna, but I’m not a terrorism security expert. At any rate, if the Secret Service is evacuating people (warranted or not), the president should know what’s going on. It’s that simple.
When I was in the Navy, I never knew a commanding officer who didn’t tell the watch officer on duty at any given time that he wanted to be told of EVERY unusual situation that happened on his watch, no matter how insignificant. When I did a couple weeks on the USS O’Brien (DD-975) the skipper would always tell the Officer of the Deck (OOD) underway to wake him up for anything. Once, during a midwatch underway, I watched the OOD and Combat Information Center Duty Officer debate for 5 minutes whether to wake the skipper when the sonarman heard an unusual sound that most likely was a whale song (they woke him and informed him of it; better safe than sorry).
That they didn’t inform Bush of the situation as it was developing seems to me to demonstrate that he’s not really in “command” there, notwithstanding the office he purportedly occupies.