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Wing Nuts

By GrammyH. • on November 7, 2009

5:00 pm – Our Commander in Chief called a press conference about the Fort Hood tragedy, then spent the FIRST TWO MINUTES talking about a conference that the Interior Department and Native Americans had just concluded. He even gave a cheery “shout out” to one of the attendees as he blathered on about how relations with Native Americans is a “Top Priority.”

Question: If everything is a Top Priority, then doesn’t it follow that nothing is a Top Priority? But I digress …

So finally, The One gets around to the subject of the presser — namely the tragedy at Fort Hood — about which he rambles in an uninspired way for two and a half more minutes, telling us mostly how little he knows, how “on top” of it all he will be, and of course how tragic it all is for him personally.

Linda Chavez refers to the first two minutes as Obama’s “Pet Goat” moment. “The Pet Goat” is the children’s story President Bush was reading with a group of inner-city second-graders at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida, when White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card informed him that an airplane had hit the World Trade Center.

Bush’s critics sneered at Bush’s decision to finish the story and visit with the children before meeting with his people and calling a press conference. This delay became known as Bush’s “Pet Goat” moment and was supposedly evidence that he was indecisive and/or uncaring.

But when the first plane hit, everyone assumed it was a small civilian plane and that the collision was either a suicide or a tragic accident. Nobody knew anything and Bush’s own adviser signaled him not to say or do anything yet.

Look at the timeline:

8:46 a.m. – American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.
9:03 a.m. – United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m.
9:30 a.m. – President Bush made his first speech about the attacks from inside the school before being removed to a secure location by the Secret Service.

There was no basis for criticizing his decision to stay with the kids … not that a lack of logic ever kept the Left from criticizing a political opponent.

What exactly would Bush have accomplished by rushing out … except to disappoint a bunch of little kids at their moment in the national limelight?

Chavez says she won’t hold her breath waiting for the MSM to compare Obama’s stumbling performance Thursday afternoon with Bush’s “Pet Goat” moment. That is probably wise. They’ve already clipped the two embarrassing minutes out of their story.

If it had been Bush, they would’ve played, not cut, those first two minutes, then dissected and ridiculed every nuance. Obama? Him they edit to look better than he is. P