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No. 1 and No. 1-A They're a TeamBy Rick Horowitz
To deal with tragedy, Bush. To deal with strategy, Cheney. For pledges of endurance, Bush. For tones of reassurance, Cheney. For inspiration, Bush. For calculation and coordination, Cheney. We could do worse. Now -- as we pause at war's doorstep, before the inevitable disputes and disagreements, the frustrations and pointed fingers -- let's take a moment for praise, shall we? So hail to George W. Bush. Hail to Dick Cheney. The prez is getting the hang of it. And the veep is doing what he's always done, only more so. Together, they helped get us through our first week on this new and thoroughly unhinged planet. The president first. When the week began, when the unthinkable images started pouring in, he seemed tentative, and tiny -- when he was visible at all. The news was overwhelming, absolutely, but the President of the United States should never look overwhelmed. This wasn't what he'd bargained for, his face announced to the world, not at all what he expected to be doing when he decided to seek the presidency. Yet there he was as the week began -- fragility in his voice, and apprehension in his eyes. But as the week wore on, something started happening to him. He started...expanding. He started to find a different voice, and it wasn't merely that his speechwriters had punched up the verbs and the adjectives. There was something different in the way he said what he said, and in the way he looked when he said it. At times he was emotional, and who could blame him? At other times he was firm and resolute. Where early in the week he seemed a reluctant figure, slipping out of the spotlight as soon as he could, by the time he got to Manhattan on Friday afternoon, he seemed perfectly at home at center stage, a bullhorn in his hand and a promise on his lips. "I can hear you!" he shouted to the crowd. "The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" Dick Cheney doesn't shout. Dick Cheney stays calm -- even, apparently, when the nation is under surprise attack and the White House may be a terrorist's target and the president is off in Florida somewhere and everything seems to be unraveling. Dick Cheney stays calm. And a good thing, too. When the second plane smashed into the World Trade Center, when it was clear that the first crash was no accident, he hit the ground running -- except that by his own account, his feet hit the ground only "periodically" as his Secret Service agents soon grabbed him up and hustled him down hallways and stairways to more secure locations underneath the White House. By then, he told Tim Russert in a simply extraordinary interview on "Meet the Press," he had already started meeting with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and others. He had already discussed activating the administration's Counterterrorism Task Force. He had already gotten hold of the president and discussed what the president's first public comments should be. Once he was in relatively safe surroundings, Cheney continued to manage the situation. He urged the president to "delay his return" to Washington until the scope of the assault was better understood. He arranged for the evacuation of certain cabinet members, of House Speaker Dennis Hastert (next in line of presidential succession to Cheney himself), of the rest of the congressional leadership. He conferred with the Secretary of Transportation about the whereabouts of other planes, convened a videoconference with the State and Justice and Defense Departments and the CIA. He recommended that the president authorize F-16 fighter jets to shoot down as a last resort any plane, even a commercial jet filled with civilians, that threatened the White House or the Capitol. He -- He took charge. He made decisions. He kept things together until the president returned. And just a few days later, when the immediate crisis had passed, he sat before the cameras and explained -- calmly, calmingly -- what he had done and why he had done it. The veep came up large. And the prez is growing. We could do lots worse. Posted 9/17/01. Get
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Rick Horowitz
