Nothing But Words

I’m curious to see what the public response will be to the non-stop use of 9/11 imagery at the Republican Convention. Obviously the motivation was to perform the following exercise:

Will it work, or will it be perceived for what it is: crass exploitation of a national tragedy for political gain? 9/11 did indeed bring us together as a nation. On that day, for, me, the past was erased. It didn’t matter to me what my prior opinion of Bush was, and I imagine that was true for most Americans. On that day, I wanted a leader who would steady and inspire not only me, but the entire nation. And on that day, Bush was not that man. His televised appearance that afternoon from a bunker in Louisiana – looking nervous and uncertain, looking down repeatedly as he slowly read a prepared statement – clearly showed a man overwhelmed, and it scared the hell out of me. The words that reassured me on that day were not his, but Colin Powell’s, who made a brief but impassioned speech from the OAS conference he was attending in Peru:

A terrible, terrible tragedy has befallen my nation, but has befallen all the nations of this region, all the nations of the world, and befallen all those who believe in democracy.

Once again we see terrorism; we see terrorists, people who don’t believe in democracy, people who believe that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose. They can destroy buildings, they can kill people, and we will be saddened by this tragedy, but they will never be allowed to kill the spirit of democracy. They cannot destroy our society. They cannot destroy our belief in the democratic way.

You can be sure that America will deal with this tragedy in a way that brings those responsible to justice. You can be sure that as terrible a day as this is for us, we will get through it, because we are a strong nation, a nation that believes in itself. You can be sure that the American spirit will prevail over this tragedy.

The Republican Convention did not mention Bush’s actions on 9/11, but instead focused on his carefully staged photo-op’s and prepared speeches on the days following 9/11. The Convention planners were wise to not mention Bush’s actions on September 11, 2001. Why? Read this article: An Interesting Day: President Bush’s Movements and Actions on 9/11. It’s a long document, but an important and telling one. It covers far more ground than the “7 minutes” made famous in Fahrenheit 9/11: it painstakingly reconstructs a highly detailed timeline of everything Bush did that day. Even after taking into account the many conflicting versions of exactly what happened and when, the picture that emerges of Bush is that of a man who was ill-informed, passive, indecisive, and uncertain about what he should be doing and where he should be going. After he got back to DC and got his PR team around him, then he started looking good. But that doesn’t tell us what he’s really made of. It was his repeated moments of befuddlement in the midst of the 9/11 crisis that showed us the real man.