President Bush cancels travel today to track economy

There is nothing like a last-minute shift in a president's travel plan to signal crisis -- and to shout that a president is paying attention to the latest round of turmoil and trouble.

As of early this evening, President Bush was planning to head on Thursday to Huntsville, Ala., to tour a plant that turns garbage into energy, and to raise funds in Huntsville and later in Jupiter, Fla., for Republicans.

But shortly after 11 p.m., well ahead of the opening of U.S. financial markets and those in Europe, Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto made the sort of seemingly innocuous announcement that can send shivers through hordes of traders.

He said that rather than head out on his political mission, the president would remain in Washington "to continue to work with his economic advisors on the serious challenges confronting our financial markets."

Fratto added:

The health of our financial markets is critical to the nation's economy, and the president remains focused on taking action to stabilize and strengthen our markets and to restore investor confidence.

The spokesman said Vice President Dick Cheney would suit up and fill in for Bush at the Huntsville fundraiser, and possibly in Jupiter.

The late-night announcement was the second last-minute, dramatic turnabout in Bush's schedule in less than three weeks.

With just a day's notice, he dropped his plan to fly to Minnesota to address the Republican National Convention on Sept. 1. Instead, as Hurricane Gustav took aim at the Gulf Coast, the president flew south to check on preparations for the storm's attack.

The signal then was that the White House was paying attention to the battering the storm was about to deliver.

The signal today is that the White House is paying attention to a different sort of storm -- the hurricane battering the markets and the broader U.S. economy.

-- James Gerstenzang

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...

President Bush bails on the convention. Is anyone complaining?

Could it be that President Bush's decision not to show up tonight at the Republican National Convention satisfies everyone -- except, perhaps, Democrats?

With his job approval rating hovering around a record low, his presence in St. Paul, Minn., during prime time wasn't exactly what was needed to shine a positive light on the Republican presidential ticket.

Indeed, it would have given commentators one more opportunity to remind Americans that Bush's expression of support for John McCain was not necessarily a good thing -- and, anyway, the two could barely tolerate each other and had not, apparently, spoken to each other since late May.

Along comes Hurricane Gustav, the convention schedule gets torn up, and instead of heading to the upper Midwest, the president dispatches himself this morning to Texas, to comfort evacuees from the approaching storm.

And he gets a chance to step out of a blatantly political role and present himself instead as "on the job as president of the United States," said Kenneth M. Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's final White House chief of staff, in an interview with Countdown to Crawford.

Besides, said Kenneth Khachigian, who wrote the speech Reagan delivered to the Republican National Convention in 1988 as he turned the political reins over to George H.W. Bush, the current President Bush really had no choice.

"The potential for disaster would make the president look thoughtless if he came to the convention and addressed the political gathering, instead of showing his concern" for the people in the storm's path.

Khachigian said:

It was probably a pretty easy call for him to make. Katrina's on everyone's mind. The choice was made for him. I don't think he had to weigh one thing against the other. Once it got to a certain dimension -- with the governors of the gulf states canceling, and [Vice President Dick] Cheney not coming -- that's probably the right thing to do.

"The president has become the comforter in chief," Khachigian said, and it would have looked inappropriate for him to forgo that role to speak in the political setting.

As for getting out of a setting in which the coverage would note Bush's low standing, Khachigian added: "It sort of relieves him of having to deal with one more series of political shots."

For a longer look at President Bush and the Republican National Convention, follow this link to a story in today's Los Angeles Times.

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press

Keeping track: President Bush, Gustav, Republicans. And don't forget the bike ride

As the dust settles, on an oddly busy White House Sunday:

The president went for a morning bike ride, part of his normal Sunday routine when in Washington.

He returned to the White House and spoke by telephone with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to check on preparations there for Hurricane Gustav.

Then--out of bike togs and wearing biz casual French blue shirt and dark slacks--Bush got a weather and preparedness update at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

Then, back to the White House.

He did not go to church, another of his regular Sunday activities when in Washington.

Along the way, he redrew his travel schedule for Monday, Labor Day:

No trip to St. Paul, Minn., to speak to the Republican National Convention. Nor will Vice President Dick Cheney speak to the delegates in person. Instead, the president will go to Texas to visit with storm evacuees and check on emergency preparation centers placed out of the storm area.

Citing the preparations going on along the Gulf Coast and in Washington, and the potential dangers residents in the storm's path were facing, the president said to reporters (and television cameras) in a corner of the FEMA operations center:

In light of these events, I will not be going to Minnesota for the Republican National Convention.  I'm going to travel down to Texas tomorrow to visit with the Emergency Operations Center in Austin, where coordination among federal, state, and local government officials is occurring.  I intend to go down to San Antonio where state and local officials are prepositioning relief materials for Texas and Louisiana, and I'll have a chance to visit with residents of both states who have been evacuated.

I will not be traveling to Louisiana tomorrow because I do not want my visit to impede in any way the response of our emergency personnel.

Throughout it all, White House officials kept up a steady flow of reports as the schedule shifted: First, relaying word that the president was unlikely to make the Minnesota trip, and then, after he spoke with Nagin, confirming that he had canceled the political mission.

As our cousins at The Swamp noted, it's all a "starkly different tableaux" than that presented in the wake of Hurricane Katrina three years ago along the Gulf Coast, when the president "made a low flight over New Orleans in Air Force One"--and took a major hit for the inadequacy of the initial federal response.

For the White House transcript of the president's remarks, click on Read Full Story...

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images