A-Team?

Time magazine -- Dipping His Toe Into Disaster (emphasis mine):

Besides, members of the A team were on vacation: chief of staff Andy Card was in Maine; Dick Cheney was in Wyoming; even Condoleezza Rice was out of town, shoe-shopping in Manhattan. Many of Bush's best p.r. minds, including media adviser Mark McKinnon, were in Greece at the wedding of White House communications director Nicolle Devenish. Had they been around, perhaps Bush would not have been accompanied only by his dog Barney when he returned from vacation in Crawford.

ROFL!

What I simply don't get is why the press isn't raking the administration over the coals for the mere fact that the "A team" was all AWOL for a situation that everyone on the %^$#! planet knew was going to be one of the worst storms in U.S. history. I mean, every one of the senior White House staff was on vacation! Even after it bacame clear that the situation all along the Gulf coast and especially New Orleans was beyond dire, they continued brush clearing, fly fishing, shoe shopping and who knows what else instead of racing back to DC to manage the crisis, or at least give the semblance that they cared. Cheney didn't even bother to return to DC until late Thursday, the fourth day of the crisis. Condi had to be chased back by bloggers who caught her in her Imelda moment.

Sure, they all have cell phones and double super duper secret communication capabilities, but these people were all out to lunch and not a one of them seemed to give a flying f*** that thousands of people were in immediate peril of dying before our eyes on national TV.

The article goes on to say:

Of course, Bush has a history of floundering at the start of a crisis and then finding his voice. Handling Sept. 11 is now considered his finest hour, even though he stumbled dramatically at first. But last week offered no New York bullhorn moment. He can't threaten to get Katrina "dead or alive." The victims didn't need a photo-op gesture of reassurance so much as water, food and escape, plus help for the long haul. And for an Administration that has staked its reputation on fighting the war on terrorism, no one can be very encouraged by the first crisis test-drive of the Department of Homeland Security. What's more, while Americans might have rallied around Bush as he faced a foreign threat, this time the enemy is his own bureaucracy, the one that left American refugees to fend for themselves far longer than anybody thinks is acceptable.

9/11 was his finest hour? He did nothing during 9/11 but pose for a photo-op that was to become his re-election campaign back-drop poster. That's it. He did nothing to aide the city in its clean-up. He sat there frozen in a classroom full of children, clueless as to what to do.

All of his supposed bravado and straight-talking is merely smoke and mirrors. He is a coward who freezes in a crisis. Just what the country needs as its president.

Worst. President. Ever.