The White House even refrained from sending out its daily press release tracking how much time has elapsed since Bush forwarded a new war-funding request to Congress. With that fight delayed for another day, Bush’s schedule was entirely devoted to grieving for the victims of the worst mass shooting in the nation’s history.
Arriving in Blacksburg, about four hours south of Washington, Bush joined several thousand people at a memorial service in honor of the students and faculty killed on Monday. He addressed the crowd for about 10 minutes and spent nearly an hour after the ceremony meeting one-on-one with more than 50 family members of the fallen—something he often does with military families who have lost loved ones in Iraq.
“I don’t know how adequate I am to help heal the heart,” Bush told ABC News afterward. “The only thing you can try to do … is show up and express your love and concern and give them a sense of assurance that there will be a better tomorrow.”
It was the right decision for a White House that has sometimes struggled to find its footing in times of national crisis.
Early on, Bush’s presidency was defined by his actions in the days after 9/11, when he traveled to the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. There, he stood atop the rubble and spoke through a bullhorn to offer comfort to grieving rescue workers on the scene—and to a devastated nation. “I can hear you,” he said. “The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” Later that same day, he delivered what is probably the best speech of his presidency, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
But triumphs like the bullhorn moment, as it has become known among White House officials, have been in short supply in other crises during the Bush presidency.
Bush will likely never live down his actions in the days after Hurricane Katrina, when his first visit to the devastated Gulf Coast was when Air Force One flew low over the skies of a flooded-out New Orleans on his way back to Washington from Texas. He didn’t see the devastation up close until four days after the storm, when pictures showing the extreme suffering of residents in the region had become a mainstay on TV news all over the world.
The president did not visit the site of last October’s shooting at an Amish school in Pennsylvania that claimed the lives of five little girls and the gunman—opting instead to convene a summit on school violence back in Washington a few days later.
Bush seemed to have learned a lesson when he traveled to the Gulf Coast earlier this year in the wake of severe storms that claimed the lives of more than a dozen people—including eight students at an Alabama high school. He visited the region two days after the tornadoes, promising to send federal aid to the region and asking the American people to send their own support.
To some critics, it seems, the president either shows up late, or doesn’t show up at all to console victims of national tragedies. Administration officials cite the president’s concern that he not get in the way of local emergency responders on the ground. And, in some cases, it’s a valid concern. His arrival tends to tie up traffic for miles around, and creates pressing security issues that could conceivably be distracting. Bush didn’t even attend the college graduations of his twin daughters, out of worries his presence there would overshadow the event and inconvenience other families.
When reporters asked White House officials on Monday if Bush would travel to Virginia Tech, they cited those concerns. But early Tuesday, a few hours before the convocation, the White House put out word that the president would attend, assuming his role as comforter-in-chief.
Stepping to the podium during yesterday’s memorial service, Bush somberly declared Tuesday as “a day of sadness” for the entire nation. “It’s impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering,” he said. “Those whose lives have been taken did nothing to deserve their fate.”
Bush implored survivors to “reach out to those who ache for sons and daughters who will never come home” and to rely on their faith as a source of strength. “It’s hard to imagine that a time will come when life at Virginia Tech will return to normal,” he said. “But such a day will come.”
On his way off campus back to Washington, the Bushes paused at a makeshift memorial set up in honor of the victims, where they placed a bouquet of flowers. Picking up a pen, Bush autographed a large cardboard Virginia Tech logo that has become a signing book for mourners. “God Bless,” he wrote.
Asked how he finds what to say when trying to console people in grief, Bush told ABC, “You give it your best shot on the words, and you hug and cry, and that’s what Laura and I have just done.”
On Wednesday President Bush returned to the game of chicken with Democrats over deadlines and funding for the war in Iraq—a debate that has almost grown disconnected from the loss of life in and around Baghdad. But for an all-too-brief moment in Blacksburg, he was part of something far more personal and human: the loss of life at home.
