BILOXI, MS - Facing sharp criticism, President Bush opened a tour of the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast on Friday by saying, "This is going to be a great gig. I can feel it. We hope to hit New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile, and Tallahassee,. I don't know if I can wail on the sax like I used to, but I've got a great backup band. We'll put on a heck of a good show."
Once at the coast, Bush expressed unhappiness with the federal efforts so far to provide food and water to hurricane victims and to stop looting and lawlessness in New Orleans. "The results are not acceptable," said Bush, who rarely admits failure.
When a senior Whitehouse correspondent pointed out to him that, since he was the President, and the President ran the federal government, and the federal government was in charge of the federal relief efforts, Bush replied, "Really?"
The president's comments came after New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin lashed out at federal officials, telling a local radio station, "they don't have a clue what's going on down here."
Bush responded, "Sure we do. You were hit by a hurricane, and that's a pretty gosh-darned big thing to get hit with."
In Biloxi, MS, Bush encountered two weeping women on a street where a house had collapsed and towering trees were stripped of their branches. "My son needs clothes," said Linda Smith, 23, clutching several trash bags. "I don't have anything."
"You've got some trash bags filled with looted goods," replied Bush. "So you have that going for you."
Bush kissed both women on their heads and walked with his arms around them, telling them they could get help from the Salvation Army. "By the way," Bush added, "how do you think the federal government is handling the situation down here, you know, on a scale of 1-10?"
Bush got a warm reception in Mobile from Governors Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Bob Riley of Alabama. Both praised the federal government's response. Bush stated, "Wait a minute. I just heard we weren't doing so good. Now this? Which is it?"
Standing with the governors in an airplane hangar housing Air Force One, Bush said, "We have a responsibility to clean up this mess." Adding, "You know, cause we're the government and you all pay taxes and everything." He then invited the governors onboard saying, "This place is depressing, lets get out of here. I know this great little sushi place in Maine."
"What is not working right, we're going to make it right," Bush said. Referring to rampant looting and crime in New Orleans. "We are going to restore order in the city of New Orleans. Except for Bourbon Street. Restoring order there would suck - it's such a fun, disorderly place. Oh yeah, and Mardi Gras, No order for New Orleans during Mardi Gras."
On the plane, Bush was briefed on plans for housing the tens of thousands of people displaced by the hurricane. "There's a lot of aid surging toward those who've been affected. Millions of gallons of water. Millions of tons of food. Unfortunately the millions of gallons of water are coming from ocean storm surge and the millions of tons of food is actually sharks and giant, killer squids. But let me assure folks, it is coming."
"We're making progress about pulling people out of the Superdome," the president said, referring to the massive damage the structure received while sheltering thousands of people. "I'd like to add that Hurricane Katrina is the furthest I have ever seen an NFL franchise go to try and get public funding for a new football stadium."
For the first time since the hurricane struck the coast, Bush stopped defending his administration's response and criticized it. "A lot of people are working hard to help those who have been affected, now, if we could just get the federal government to chip in."
Bush hoped that his tour of the hurricane-ravaged states would boost the spirits of increasingly desperate storm victims and their tired rescuers. "I don't know why," Bush said, "but people really seem to like me. I make them feel good about themselves. I just light up a room."
Friday's trip follows a 35-minute flyover of the region he took Wednesday aboard Air Force One as he headed back to Washington from his Texas ranch where he was taking a vacation. "That was one of the hardest vacations of my life," Bush said . "You may think it's easy to view a region's devastation sitting in Air Force One while being served Filet Mignon by my personal chef at 35,000 feet, but I'm here to tell you that you have to squint your eyes real hard in order to see devastation from that high up."
While the president was working his way along the coast, his wife, Laura, was scheduled to be nearby in LaFayette, LA. Mrs. Bush was to visit the Cajundome area to console people who took shelter there. "Why anybody would seek shelter in something called a 'Cajundome' is beyond me," she said.
Bush has tried to respond to Katrina in a way that evokes the national goodwill he cultivated after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but he began facing questions about his leadership in the crisis almost immediately. New Orleans officials, in particular, were enraged about what they said was a slow federal response. "Look," said one New Orleans official, "We may have built this city on swamps and sand bars that sit below sea level right next to the ocean and the paths of hurricanes, and we may lack the political will to use the technological know-how that we have to avert this amount of hurricane damage, but those feds sure are slow with that federal aide."