The President is battling back against his hurricane problem. On days when he is not taking care of the North Korean atom bomb problem, he is on the plane to New Orleans for photo-opping.
To show that he is in the trenches he does without his American flag background, usually de rigeur for him and for other administration officials. Nevertheless he is not cutting as clear an image as he wishes.
The difficulty is that a photo-op with an African-American baby reenforces the compassionate, tender father image but undermines the jut-jawed strong leader image. The question Karl Rove is wrestling with is, do strong leaders do koochie-koochie-koo with gurgling fatty pies? And, if they do, would it help to put some American flags and a few Marines in the background to beef up the strong leader side? Another example of the tough choices modern day presidents must make.
The President has been taking the heat for the cockups perpetrated by the now departed FEMA director, Mike Brown, the Arabian stallion guy. Brown is gone and Mike Chernoff, the Secretary of Homeland Defense, has been backburnered but the hits keep on coming and they are bruising Mr. Bush's poll numbers. Even putting admirals and generals in charge has failed to nudge the President back into the strong leader category in the public opinion surveys.
Something else needed doing and in tight situations like this nothing works better than an investigation. And no one can investigate all the things that went right with the Katrina rescue effort better than the President's own homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend. They call her, in the football parlance popular in the White House, the President's go-to gal. Townsend has previously been billed as such a tough cookie that one bite on this former prosecutor of gangsters and you'll crack a molar. When this woman was chosen to run the President's war on terrorism a worried Osama wore out his prayer rug. Townsend, who on the human compassion side has given birth to a child, will find out who has been criticizing FEMA and why.
But does self-investigation count? Yes, it does. It's like self-examination before confession. You can kid yourself but you better not bullshit God. She'll get it right and watch his numbers zoom.