Running-mates abounding. The city of New Orleans was reluctantly "dredged up" to share the spotlight with the virtually washed-out hoo-hah in the Twin Cities, and it made me very angry...all over again. It's personal. N.O. became an adopted home town for our sons' grandparents from late sixties to early eighties, and was our perfect vacation venue once or twice a year. There is nothing quite like it for the Christmas holidays. Once over Lake Pontchartrain, it's summertime again, and one can walk free and sleeveless around the French Quarter, whose day-and-night delights are well enough known to anybody. (I'll just mention the following, for the kids' sake: we always made a stop at two ancient emporia--the magic store [shades of Steve Martin] on Canal, and the tin-soldier shop on Chartres.)
Fond memories, and, for a second time, they are sullied by Bush and Company. For McCain, of course, Gustav's destruction and body-count turned out to be too minimal for good theater, and to be even worse for McCain's keeping-the-White-House-at-a-distance strategy, because it allowed Bush to wedge himself in last night (he was originally cancelled altogether, I understand) for nine minutes of self-aggrandizing bullshit. (No, I didn't hear it--would you have expected me to watch?--but I read the transcript.) Reportedly, he was "furious" that a sitting President was accorded such pariah-like treatment by his own party, but he should have known that a lot of voters besides me would be "furious" at the bad memories he invoked of three years earlier. After Good Evening, it was the first thing out of his mouth: "As you know, my duties have me here in Washington tonight to oversee the Federal government's efforts to help citizens recover..."--and that was PRECISELY WHAT HE WAS NOT DOING during, or indeed well after Katrina hit in 2005. "Compassionate Conservatism," my ass. Katrina exposed Dubbya at his ego-centric best. No heart. I kept wishing fondly as we watched the tragedy unfold, that the flawed but big-hearted (and -brained) Bill Clinton could have somehow stepped in. And here was Bush back again somehow taking credit. You know what?--if McCain had won the White House starting in 2000 rather than Bush, even HE could have done better.
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