Let Bush be Bush

Such was a statement made by one of the Powerline bloggers recently in regards to a recent semi-personal visit they shared with the president and a few others. It was conducted outside range of TV cameras and evidently the bloggers were amazed at how much the prez appeared at ease and in command of the issues.

Everyone is familiar with the Bush we see conducting interviews or press conferences from inside the beltway, where he appears uncomfortable and often mauls the language. This communications gap hasn't served him well, as support for his policies seem to be falling if polls are to be believed (just today Republican Chris Shays joined the anti-war bandwagon).

Most people aren't privy to this 'other Bush' but occasionally we get a brief glimpse. He's visiting Maine this weekend to attend a family wedding, triggering more boos from the lefty blogs. But a president is never fully on vacation, case in point, he took time out from his time off to host a meeting with members of five families who'd lost loved ones in Iraq, Afghanistan and on 9/11.

No surprise, he's been doing this kind of thing for years but out of the limelight, which is a sign of respect for the privacy of the families. Their names are not released by the White House.

In typical fashion the HuffPo blog headlined this story as follows: "Bush To War Widow: “No Point” In Discussing “Pros And Cons Of The War". This in response to one of the family members, a war dissenter and democrat activist, who admitted she came to the meeting to discuss bringing the troops home (even though her husband died in Afghanistan).

They linked to a TPMCafe poster who dug a little deeper on this "truth to power" speaker, whose name is Hildi Hally:

She told me that her husband, Patrick Damon, who's long been active in Democratic politics, had been in Afghanistan as an engineer building roads when he died in June.

Ms. Halley seemingly blamed Bush for killing Mr. Damon and asked him as a Christian to bring all the troops home, not just those in Iraq. When Bush replied by saying we were responding to an attack on 9/11, she began talking about how the US put the Taliban in power, to which Bush gently cut her off.

Good thing the president was above the juvenile antics found here in the blogosphere, since he stopped short of pointing out which adminstration let the Taliban shelter the people who attacked us, and failed to demand she describe how we're supposed to stop these people other than militarily.

But back to HuffPo. They ignored this comment from one of the other attendees, for obvious reasons:

"You see a different side in person from what you see in the TV," he said. "Once I met him in person, I was very impressed by his genuineness and sincerity."

Let's not get carried away, he's a politician. But it makes you wonder why the White House communications office hasn't found a way to let more Americans see this side of Bush.

Permit me to inject some personal input here. My late father was a combat engineer in the National Guard in 1951 and was called to active duty in Korea, a war which has never officially ended and where US troops are still deployed. In my recollection I never heard him cuss the name of Truman or the democrats for getting us into that quagmire, even though he was a staunch republican.