President Bush: Preparing a down-sized, and distant, delivery to Republicans
How many times have we heard White House officials explain that with modern communications -- the telephone, for instance, or, getting fancy, with secure video -- a president can be president from anywhere in the world?
Whenever a president wants to head off on vacation to, say, Martha's Vineyard, Mass., or Crawford, Texas, while geopolitical storms brew, his aides have insisted that he can monitor world crises regardless of his locale. And generally they are correct.
But tonight, President Bush has decided that the best place to be is the White House -- and to address the Republican National Convention by video, rather than make an in-person speech as planned before Hurricane Gustav led convention planners to tear up their schedule.
As White House Press Secretary Dana Perino explained it at her daily press briefing:
One of the things that you learn in hurricanes is that just when you think everything is safe and sound, there are still concerns. And in addition to that, we have many other storms that are churning out there. We have Tropical Storm Hanna, and Ike that's following behind that, and possibly another one behind that. And so it's appropriate that the President be able to be here at the White House.
And so there he was this morning in the White House, meeting with senior officials for an update on the storm.
Now, about the...
...length of the speech: It was originally going to be about 15 minutes. Perino said it has been cut to "a little bit less than eight."
"Watching something on video for, you know, a whole 15 minutes would, you know, taxes the patience," she said.
What about the timing?
According to the original convention plan, the president was going to be the final speaker Monday evening, addressing a prime-time network television audience between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. EDT.
Under the revised agenda, his time slot is between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. EDT, before the Big Three networks are scheduled to begin their one-hour of live coverage.
That, Perino said, was the choice of the convention planners.
"Political psychobabble," she said of efforts to suggest that something else -- for instance, lowering the president's profile -- was at play.
Does it sound as though the Republicans were saying "don't come?"
"I wouldn't put it that way," Perino said.
The speech, by the way, will be "a little about the hurricane," but mostly about why the president believes that "John McCain has the qualities that are demanded by the commander-in-chief role."
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo credit: Mannie Garcia / Bloomberg News
