George W. Bush could earn a chunk of respect from me if he would stop saying things like, "If we'd had specific knowledge of the terrorists' plans for 9/11, I would have moved mountains to prevent it." I'm almost as sick of that as I am of jokes about Donald Trump's hair.
Is there anyone anywhere who thinks any president, given hard info, would have gone fishing rather than try to stop the murder of thousands of Americans? Hell, I think most Chief Execs would even try to do something about Donald Trump's hair if only they could.
I do think Bush is getting hammered a bit unfairly by Democrats on this. But I also think a certain amount of it is his own fault for saying things like that, and also for statements like this one. This morning, he tried to characterize a document entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S." as saying — and I quote — "…nothing about an attack on America." To me, that's right up there with "I did not inhale" in the category of Disingenuousness.
I do not believe Bush is stupid but I sometimes agree with Jon Stewart's line about how he sure seems to think we are.
As we get closer to November, the Democrats are going to launch a full-scale assault regarding what Bush did the morning of 9/11. They will charge, in effect, that when he was informed America was under attack, he did absolutely nothing. They may even make commercials out of that footage of him reading stories in a classroom and put in in a split-screen with people falling out of the World Trade Center. If Bush responds with his line about not wanting to panic the children, he'll do himself an awful lot of damage.