Frank Rich, Man I Wish He Wasn't Behind the New York Times Wall Of Money

Via The Raw Story.

"New Orleans was Iraq redux with an all-American cast," Rich writes.

Excerpts from Rich's column:

As an opening act, Bush met on Wednesday with Rockey Vaccarella, a Katrina survivor who with much publicity drove a "replica" of a FEMA trailer from New Orleans to Washington to seek an audience with the president. No Cindy Sheehan bum's rush for him. Bush granted his wish and paraded him before the press. That was enough to distract the visitor from his professed message to dramatize the unfinished job on the Gulf. Instead Vaccarella effusively thanked the president for "the millions of FEMA trailers" complete with air-conditioning and TV. "You know, I wish you had another four years, man," he said. "If we had this president for another four years, I think we'd be great."

...It was up to bloggers and Democrats to report shortly thereafter that Vaccarella had run as a Republican candidate for the St. Bernard Parish commission in 1999. It was up to Iris Hageney of Gretna, La., to complain on the Times-Picayune Web site that the episode was "a huge embarrassment" that would encourage Americans to "forget the numerous people who still don't have trailers or at least one with electricity or water."

That is certainly the White House game plan as it looks toward the president's two-day return to the scene of the crime. Just as it brought huge generators to floodlight Bush's prime-time recovery speech in Jackson Square a year ago -- and then yanked the plug as soon as he was done -- so it will stop at little to bathe this anniversary in the rosiest possible glow.