| Well, I've liked Sebelius from basically day one, so take this how you will.
I don't really think she meant her comments to be taken as a shot at Bush. I think she meant to cover her own ass a little bit, saying that things won't happen as fast as she would like because she is short on the resources she'd normally have. She didn't say anything that wasn't true, and as far as I know, she didn't politicize her comments either. There wasn't any whining about "a war we shouldn't be in", or anything like that, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt here. If I'm wrong, please show me and I'll gladly rethink and retract.
What I do think happened is that the media is hyper-sensitive to any response by Bush and FEMA to any national disaster because of how controversial the response was to Katrina. Whether or not you think Bush and/or FEMA deserved blame over Katrina is not relevant. I think we can all agree that there is a lot of people who do feel like Bush failed to respond to that crisis appropriately. Thus, the media is going to pounce on anything that sounds like criticism of Bush over his handling of future disasters because it is good for ratings.
Personally, I think this is what happened with Sebelius' comments this past week. Maybe she could've phrased things better. I hope she didn't mean to take a shot at Bush, because playing politics right now is flat out lame, and like I said about gun control legislation in the wake of the VT shootings, it would be an unquestionable exploitation of a horrible tragedy.
Finally, this public "confrontation" aside, I think Sebelius and Bush both are doing a good job at helping as much as they can with the recovery in Greensburg. I think they both deserve a lot of credit.  |