1. To ABC's Surprise, Katrina Victims Praise Bush and Blame Nagin
ABC News producers probably didn't hear what they expected when they sent Dean Reynolds to the Houston Astrodome's parking lot to get reaction to President Bush's speech from black evacuees from New Orleans. Instead of denouncing Bush and blaming him for their plight, they praised Bush and blamed local officials. Reynolds asked Connie London: "Did you harbor any anger toward the President because of the slow federal response?" She rejected the premise: "No, none whatsoever, because I feel like our city and our state government should have been there before the federal government was called in." She pointed out: "They had RTA buses, Greyhound buses, school buses, that was just sitting there going under water when they could have been evacuating people." Not one of the six people interviewed on camera had a bad word for Bush -- despite Reynolds' best efforts. Reynolds goaded: "Was there anything that you found hard to believe that he said, that you thought, well, that's nice rhetoric, but, you know, the proof is in the pudding?" Brenda Marshall answered, "No, I didn't," prompting Reynolds to marvel to anchor Ted Koppel: "Very little skepticism here." Listen to audio and see video

2. Analysts Note Bush's FDR-Like Big Spending, Mull Tax Hike Need
Following Bush's Thursday night speech from New Orleans, network analysts noted how the massive spending proposals contradict Bush's conservative image and they speculated about the necessity of a tax hike. On CNN, Time's Jay Carney suggested it "is going to be very interesting to watch to see whether or not the President loses support from fiscal conservative Republicans" and Larry King asked David Gergen: "Do you buy the concept that maybe we need tax increases?" Gergen naturally agreed. MSNBC's Chris Matthews saw it as "a speech which was more redolent of an address by Lyndon B. Johnson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt than a conservative President." Tucker Carlson observed that Bush's "line that 'racism causes poverty,' and that federal spending is the solution to that" is "not conservative" and "to hear a purportedly conservative President say that is unreal." Carlson correctly added: "This guy is a bigger spender than Bill Clinton." Over on ABC, Ted Koppel echoed Matthews: "Not since FDR and the New Deal have I heard an American President promise quite as much....Doesn't sound like a conservative Republican." Koppel soon asked if Bush's programs can "be done without raising taxes?"

3. Scarborough and Williams Fret About Bush's Damage-Free Backdrop
Just past 10pm EDT Thursday night after President Bush's address, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams if, after "reporting from a major American city where young children died of dehydration out on sidewalks," he found it an "ironic choice" by President Bush to deliver his speech "from Jackson Square, an area largely untouched by Katrina's devastation?" Williams revealed that "some of us in the media were chattering about the choice of backdrops" and suggested you don't "want perhaps total devastation, but maybe a mid-range desolation behind the President."

4. Visit by "Big Oil" Bush to Oil Refinery Agitates Olbermann
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann obsessed Thursday night with President Bush's visit to an oil refinery in Mississippi. "He goes to greet the President of the company and the workers at the Chevron oil refinery," Olbermann remarked on Countdown, adding his disbelief: "With all of the controversy over big oil and this administration, four and a half years, he does this today." Of course, refinery capacity is a major factor in the price of gas, so it's hardly a surprising stop. Suggesting Bush's public relations advisors are off their game, Olbermann complained that "today they sent him to the Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, as if reminding everybody of his oil connections and the government's oil connections was not among the worst things he could do right now. Where did the political sharpshooters in this administration go?" At the end of his hour, Olbermann insisted that Bush's visit "will undoubtedly strike many as strange" given the "controversial perceived ties to big oil already under fire."

5. Gibson Again Urges Tax Increase, FNC First Suggests Spending Cuts
ABC's recurring solution: Raise taxes. On Wednesday's Good Morning America, co-host Charles Gibson, who last week pressed Senator Hillary Clinton about how, given the costs of Katrina and Iraq, we're "going to have to raise taxes?", hit White House counselor Dan Bartlett with the same argument: "Are you going to maintain that we can pay for this, we can pay for the war in Iraq, and we can pay for the rising healthcare costs in this country without raising taxes?" (The week before Gibson asked Clinton about raising taxes, his co-host, Diane Sawyer, had suggested a tax hike to President Bush.) Over on FNC's Fox and Friends, E.D. Hill treated a tax hike as an undesirable last resort. She told Bartlett that "I don't think Americans want to pay '70s era taxes," so "where are we gonna cut the money to fund this?" But, she recognized, "Congress spending less money is like a really warm day in International Falls, Minnesota. What about taxes? Would the President be willing to increase taxes to pay for this rebuilding?"

To ABC's Surprise, Katrina Victims Praise
Bush and Blame Nagin

     Reynolds asked Connie London: "Did you harbor any anger toward the President because of the slow federal response?" She rejected the premise: "No, none whatsoever, because I feel like our city and our state government should have been there before the federal government was called in." She pointed out: "They had RTA buses, Greyhound buses, school buses, that was just sitting there going under water when they could have been evacuating people."
     Not one of the six people interviewed on camera had a bad word for Bush -- despite Reynolds' best efforts. Reynolds goaded: "Was there anything that you found hard to believe that he said, that you thought, well, that's nice rhetoric, but, you know, the proof is in the pudding?" Brenda Marshall answered, "No, I didn't," prompting Reynolds to marvel to anchor Ted Koppel: "Very little skepticism here."

     Reynolds pressed another woman: "Did you feel that the President was sincere tonight?" She affirmed: "Yes, he was." Reynolds soon wondered who they held culpable for the levee breaks. Unlike the national media, London did not blame supposed Bush-mandated budget cuts: "They've been allocated federal funds to fix the levee system, and it never got done. I fault the mayor of our city personally. I really do."

     [This item was posted late Thursday night on the MRC's blog, NewsBusters.org. To offer a comment, and for a video clip in both RealPlayer and Windows Media formats, as well as an MP3 audio clip, go to this NewsBusters node: newsbusters.org ]

     The MRC's Rich Noyes alerted me to the reactions ABC broadcast.

     Immediately after Bush finished his speech from Jackson Square in New Orleans, at about 8:26pm local CDT, Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC's hour-long coverage, went to Dean Reynolds who was outside in a parking lot with a group of black people from New Orleans who are living at the Reliant Center next to the Astrodome.

     (No names were provided on-screen for those interviewed, so I only have first names for two, and no name for one, of the six.)

     Reynolds elicited reaction from the group sitting in chairs: "I'd like to get the reaction of Connie London who spent several horrible hours at the Superdome. You heard the President say repeatedly that you are not alone, that the country stands beside you. Do you believe him?"
     Connie London: "Yeah, I believe him, because here in Texas, they have truly been good to us. I mean-"
     Reynolds: "Did you get a sense of hope that you could return to your home one day in New Orleans?"
     London: "Yes, I did. I did."
     Reynolds: "Did you harbor any anger toward the President because of the slow federal response?"
     London: "No, none whatsoever, because I feel like our city and our state government should have been there before the federal government was called in. They should have been on their jobs."
     Reynolds: "And they weren't?"
     London: "No, no, no, no. Lord, they wasn't. I mean, they had RTA buses, Greyhound buses, school buses, that was just sitting there going under water when they could have been evacuating people."
     Reynolds: "Now, Mary, you were rescued from your house which was basically submerged in your neighborhood. Did you hear something in the President's words that you could glean some hope from?"
     Mary: "Yes. He said we're coming back, and I believe we're coming back. He's going to build the city up. I believe that."
     Reynolds: "You believe you'll be able to return to your home?"
     Mary: "Yes, I do."
     Reynolds: "Why?"
     Mary: "Because I really believe what he said. I believe. I got faith."
     Reynolds: "Back here in the corner, we've got Brenda Marshall, right?"
     Brenda Marshall: "Yes."
     Reynolds: "Now, Brenda, you were, spent, what, several days at the Superdome, correct?"
     Marshall: "Yes, I did."
     Reynolds: "What did you think of what the President told you tonight?"
     Marshall: "Well, I think -- I think the speech was wonderful, you know, him specifying that we will return back and that we will have like mobile homes, you know, rent or whatever. I was listening to that pretty good. But I think it was a well fine speech."
     Reynolds: "Was there any particular part of it that stood out in your mind? I mean, I saw you all nod when he said the Crescent City is going to come back one day."
     Marshall: "Well, I think I was more excited about what he said. That's probably why I nodded."
     Reynolds: "Was there anything that you found hard to believe that he said, that you thought, well, that's nice rhetoric, but, you know, the proof is in the pudding?"
     Marshall: "No, I didn't."
     Reynolds: "Good. Well, very little skepticism here. Frederick Gould, did you hear something that you could hang on to tonight from the President?"
     Frederick Gould: "Well, I just know, you know, he said good things to me, you know, what he said, you know. I was just trying to listen to everything they were saying, you know."
     Reynolds: "And Cecilia, did you feel that the President was sincere tonight?"
     Cecilia: "Yes, he was."
     Reynolds: "Do you think this is a little too late, or do you think he's got a handle on the situation?"
     Cecilia: "To me it was a little too late. It was too late, but he should have did something more about it."
     Reynolds: "Now do you all believe that you will one day return to your homes?"
     Voices: "Yes" and "I do."
     Reynolds: "I mean, do you all want to return to your homes? We're hearing some people don't even want to go back."
     Mary: "I want to go back."
     Reynolds: "You want to go back."
     Mary: "I want to go back. That's my home. That's all I know."
     Reynolds: "Is it your home for your whole life?"
     Mary: "Right. That's my home."
     Reynolds: "And do you expect to go back to the house or a brand new dwelling or what?"
     Mary: "I expect to go back to something. I know it ain't my house, because it's gone."
     Reynolds: "What is the one mistake that could have been prevented that would have made your lives much better? Is it simply getting all of you out much sooner or what was it?"
     Mary: "I'm going to tell you the truth. I had the opportunity to get out, but I didn't believe it. So I stayed there till it was too late."
     Reynolds: "Did you all have the same feeling? I mean, did you all have the opportunity to get out, but you were skeptical that this was the really bad one?"
     Unnamed woman: "No, I got out when they said evacuate. I got out that Sunday and I left before the storm came. But I know they could have did better than what they did because like they said, buses were just sitting there, and they could have came through there and got people out, because they were saying immediate evacuation. Some people didn't believe it. But they should have brung the force of the army through to help these people and make them understand it really was coming."
     London: "And really it wasn't Hurricane Katrina that really tore up the city. It was when they opened the floodgates. It was not the hurricane itself. It was the floodgates, when they opened the floodgates, that's where all the water came."
     Reynolds: "Do you blame anybody for this?"
     London: "Yes. I mean, they've been allocated federal funds to fix the levee system, and it never got done. I fault the mayor of our city personally. I really do."
     Reynolds: "All right. Well, thank you all very much. I wish you all the best of luck. I hope you don't have to spend too much more time here in the Reliant Center and you can get back to New Orleans as the President said. Ted, that is the word from the Houston Astrodome. And as I said, when the President said that the Crescent City will rise again, there were nods all around this parking lot."

     # Again, to watch a video or audio clip from this story, go to this node on the MRC's blog NewsBusters.org, exposing and combating liberal media bias: newsbusters.org

Analysts Note Bush's FDR-Like Big Spending,
Mull Tax Hike Need

     Following Bush's Thursday night speech from New Orleans, network analysts noted how the massive spending proposals contradict Bush's conservative image and they speculated about the necessity of a tax hike. On CNN, Time's Jay Carney suggested it "is going to be very interesting to watch to see whether or not the President loses support from fiscal conservative Republicans" and Larry King asked David Gergen: "Do you buy the concept that maybe we need tax increases?" Gergen naturally agreed. MSNBC's Chris Matthews saw it as "a speech which was more redolent of an address by Lyndon B. Johnson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt than a conservative President." Tucker Carlson observed that Bush's "line that 'racism causes poverty,' and that federal spending is the solution to that" is "not conservative" and "to hear a purportedly conservative President say that is unreal." Carlson correctly added: "This guy is a bigger spender than Bill Clinton." Over on ABC, Ted Koppel echoed Matthews: "Not since FDR and the New Deal have I heard an American President promise quite as much....Doesn't sound like a conservative Republican." Koppel soon asked if Bush's programs can "be done without raising taxes?"

     A rundown of some quotes collated by the MRC's Brad Wilmouth:

     -- CNN's Larry King Live:

     King: "Jay Carney, where do you think the money's going to come from?"
     Carney, Deputy Washington Bureau Chief of Time magazine: "Well, I have to agree with what's been said, that it's highly unlikely that the money will be carved out of other programs. I mean, some of the suggestions from think tanks in Washington as to where the money could come out of, includes the budget of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example, or, you know, places that have already been put on the line through this disaster. So I think we'll likely borrow, like Mark Whitaker said, and this is going to be very interesting to watch to see whether or not the President loses support from fiscal conservative Republicans, who have already felt upset with this president who has overseen, you know, a vast expansion in the size of government over the last four or five years, which is not what he promised he would do."

     Later, King asked: "David Gergen, do you buy the concept that maybe we need tax increases?"
     Gergen: "I think we should look at that, Larry. I think all things ought to be on the table. It would be reckless in the extreme just to borrow our way through this crisis and not have some kind of sacrifice to help pay for it..."

     # MSNBC. Chris Matthews, in DC: "Well, that was a dramatic statement by the President at Jackson Square in New Orleans, a speech which was more redolent of an address by Lyndon B. Johnson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt than a conservative president. A breathtaking program involving job training, housing, economic development, all kinds of economic relief for a quarter of a million people with a price tag of $60 billion."

     A bit later in the 9pm EDT hour, Tucker Carlson, in New Jersey: "But the most interesting line in the whole thing to me was his line that 'racism causes poverty,' and that federal spending is the solution to that. Now, that may be right, it may be wrong, it's not conservative. Conservatives don't believe that, and to hear a purportedly conservative president say that is unreal. And the precedent, imagine if I'm the mayor of Detroit, I'm listening to this thinking, 'Well, I've got a lot of poverty caused by racism,' right, if I'm the mayor of Hartford or Bridgeport or Washington, D.C., right? I mean, this is a precedent he has set. It's a remarkable thing for a Republican president to say, and I think it's going to annoy the hell out of his base."
     Matthews: "You know, he did, by the way, couch it as historic prejudice. He didn't say current prejudice."
     Carlson: "Right, no, that's true, but the principal that people are poor because they're discriminated against and the federal government can set that right by social spending is actually a very old idea that was tried for thirty years to really no effect at all. But it is a liberal idea. Again, I'm not even attacking the idea, though I think it's wrong. I'm merely saying this is what liberals say. It's not at all what conservatives say. And the conservatives watching the speech tonight who noticed that line are sitting bolt upright right now thinking, 'Did I just hear him say that?' It's a big deal. Trust me."
     Matthews: "Tucker, how do you think this happened that the President of the United States, known for his minimalist views towards the role of government, is a real conservative in many ways, why he would give a speech that's so redolent of an LBJ war on poverty speech?"
     Carlson: "Because that's a crock in the first place. That is a myth created by people who don't know much about Bush and don't understand him. This is my view. The press looks at Bush as a right-winger. They always have. So everything Bush does must be the result of his antipathy toward government. Not so! Domestic spending, not military -- and you know this well, you talk about it all the time -- is at historic highs. This guy is a bigger spender than Bill Clinton. Now, that may be good, it may be bad. It's not conservative, and people can't step back from their own biases long enough to see the truth, which is, he is a big spender."
     Matthews: "Well, that's certainly the case with regard to domestic spending. You're right. It's growing just as fast as it would under a Democrat, if not faster. You're so right, Tucker Carlson."

     -- ABC News. Following the reaction segment detailed in item #1 above, Ted Koppel segued to George Stephanopoulos: "If the national response is reflected by that small group of people in the parking lot of the Astrodome, the President has made some major progress tonight. I'm joined now by George Stephanopoulos, who is up in New York. George, I must tell you, not since FDR and the New Deal have I heard an American President promise quite as much in terms of government assistance to a lot of people as we heard tonight. Doesn't sound like a conservative Republican from a fiscal point of view, but it sure seems to be what people want to hear."
     Stephanopoulos: "It sure was for those people down in Houston. Ted, the President is likely to face far more skepticism in Washington. You're right. The scope of what he proposed tonight, the federal government taking the lead in the rebuilding effort, the federal government taking the lead in preventing and responding to future natural disasters, you're right. He said it is clear the military will take the lead. It is a huge expansion. He also said he and his own government, the cabinet, will investigate what went wrong. That's going to face a lot of criticism from Democrats who say the President can't investigate himself. Neither can the Republican Congress. But you're also right. I think he's likely to face some questions from conservatives in his own party who are going to ask 'how much is this all going to cost? You didn't say a word about where we're going to cut spending to pay for it.'"
     Koppel: "Well, I was going to ask you, the last thing in the world that George W. Bush wants to do is raise taxes, but the amount of money that we're talking about here, we're talking about many, many, many tens of billions of dollars. Can that be done without raising taxes?"
     Stephanopoulos: "Well, the President will not raise taxes, and this Congress will not raise taxes, so the deficit is going to go up. The estimates are this is likely to be about $200 billion when all is said and done, although that's a very loose estimate at this point. But the President and his team have been very, very clear. They believe the last thing that they should do is raise taxes, especially when there is some fear that it could tip the economy, in their view, into a recession."

Scarborough and Williams Fret About Bush's
Damage-Free Backdrop

     Just past 10pm EDT Thursday night after President Bush's address, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams if, after "reporting from a major American city where young children died of dehydration out on sidewalks," he found it an "ironic choice" by President Bush to deliver his speech "from Jackson Square, an area largely untouched by Katrina's devastation?" Williams revealed that "some of us in the media were chattering about the choice of backdrops" and suggested you don't "want perhaps total devastation, but maybe a mid-range desolation behind the President."

     Scarborough, at MSNBC's New Jersey facility, asked: "Brian, talk about it. This has been a, not to personalize this too much, but it has been a personal journey for you. You've been on the ground from the very beginning, like you said, reporting from a major American city where young children died of dehydration out on sidewalks, and now you've got the President of the United States delivering a speech to the nation from Jackson Square, an area largely untouched by Katrina's devastation. Did you find that an ironic choice?"

     From a New Orleans street, Williams replied: "I will say some of us in the media were chattering about the choice of backdrops, not that you want perhaps total devastation, but maybe a mid-range desolation behind the President. This was, if we were coming here to New Orleans to do a Nightly News centered around the city, that might have been one of the locations we chose as, in the parlance of our business, a beauty shot. There are few better-looking backdrops in this city. It's their candy store. It's their President. They chose the backdrop for a message presumably of hope. I can say, Joe, this. We decided to come cover this hurricane. The difference about this storm was it was headed right for here, and this is a bathtub, and we can look out at the Mississippi at ships at or above, as you know, eye level. We rode out that storm that day with those people in the Superdome. Not all of them lived. And I've said this before on the air, I hope the lesson of this is not that my son and daughter at home have been assigned a different value as humans in the United States than their equivalents here in New Orleans. I would certainly like that not to be true about the country I was raised in, that I have prospered in, and that I love."

Visit by "Big Oil" Bush to Oil Refinery
Agitates Olbermann

     MSNBC's Keith Olbermann obsessed Thursday night with President Bush's visit to an oil refinery in Mississippi. "He goes to greet the President of the company and the workers at the Chevron oil refinery," Olbermann remarked on Countdown, adding his disbelief: "With all of the controversy over big oil and this administration, four and a half years, he does this today." Of course, refinery capacity is a major factor in the price of gas, so it's hardly a surprising stop. Suggesting Bush's public relations advisors are off their game, Olbermann complained that "today they sent him to the Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, as if reminding everybody of his oil connections and the government's oil connections was not among the worst things he could do right now. Where did the political sharpshooters in this administration go?" At the end of his hour, Olbermann insisted that Bush's visit "will undoubtedly strike many as strange" given the "controversial perceived ties to big oil already under fire."

     The MRC's Brad Wilmouth took down Olbermann's comments on his September 15 show.

     # At 8:12pm EDT to Newsweek's Howard Fineman: "Last question: Mr. Bush goes to Pascagoula in Mississippi late this afternoon hours before this critical speech, it's his other part of this trip, and he goes to greet the president of the company and the workers at the Chevron oil refinery. With all of the controversy over big oil and this administration, four and a half years, he does this today. Howard, who is his principal advance man on this trip, Howard Dean? Does this just not hand a whole section of the good publicity that might come tonight back over this gesture?"
     Fineman: "Quite possibly, although in that part of the world, oil is big, and if he's trying to tell the locals that he's on their side and he wants to rebuild the economic infrastructure, it's not a bad move. But I agree to you, on a national level when people are outraged at the price of gasoline, the last thing they want to see him doing is standing in front of a Chevron sign, so, you know, Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, a Republican, is a former Republican National Chairman, very influential in the whole rebuilding process, if there's no federal czar announced tonight, I think Haley Barbour's the reason why because people like Haley Barbour and indeed the Democrats in Louisiana don't want a federal czar. They want the federal money, but they want local control of it. Haley Barbour's actually a very key player here and probably the reason why Bush went to that particular site."
     Olbermann: "Well, I hope the President got the tanks refilled on the entire motorcade."

     # To Chris Matthews at 8:54pm EDT: "From the purely political point-of-view -- the strategy, the photo-ops, the making hay, the hardball, if you will -- when did the President and his team lose their edge? They have been in a slump for months, but since Katrina hit, they look like the Yankees after game three of the playoffs with the Red Sox last year. Today they sent him to the Chevron refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, as if reminding everybody of his oil connections-"
     Chris Matthews: "Right."
     Olbermann: "-and the government's oil connections was not among the worst things he could do right now. Where did the political sharpshooters in this administration go?"
    
     # Wrapping up his program: "A quick recap of the editorial background against which Mr. Bush speaks, beginning with the stakes that could not be higher tonight, which is why the President's earlier stop in the Gulf region this afternoon will undoubtedly strike many as strange. The visit to the Chevron oil refinery by the leader of an administration with controversial perceived ties to big oil already under fire. Speaking of the unemployed, if not unsinkable, Michael Brown telling the New York Times he blames local authorities entirely for the disastrous disaster response, and says he made a blur of calls to the White House as the crisis unfolded, evidently not with much impact...."

Gibson Again Urges Tax Increase, FNC
First Suggests Spending Cuts

     ABC's recurring solution: Raise taxes. On Wednesday's Good Morning America, co-host Charles Gibson, who last week pressed Senator Hillary Clinton about how, given the costs of Katrina and Iraq, we're "going to have to raise taxes?", hit White House counselor Dan Bartlett with the same argument: "Are you going to maintain that we can pay for this, we can pay for the war in Iraq, and we can pay for the rising healthcare costs in this country without raising taxes?" (The week before Gibson asked Clinton about raising taxes, his co-host, Diane Sawyer, had suggested a tax hike to President Bush.) Over on FNC's Fox and Friends, E.D. Hill treated a tax hike as an undesirable last resort. She told Bartlett that "I don't think Americans want to pay '70s era taxes," so "where are we gonna cut the money to fund this?" But, she recognized, "Congress spending less money is like a really warm day in International Falls, Minnesota. What about taxes? Would the President be willing to increase taxes to pay for this rebuilding?"

     The September 8 CyberAlert recounted: Six days after ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed President Bush about raising taxes, her colleague, Charles Gibson, also exploited the hurricane disaster to raise the subject of a tax hike with Senator Hillary Clinton. Following his Wednesday interview on Good Morning America with Clinton, Gibson related how "just before we went on the air" he "asked her given the fact that it's going to cost so much for recovery and with what we're spending in Iraq whether we're not going to have to raise taxes." Gibson fretted: "You can't get a politician to say definitively we're going to have to raise taxes. And so, she didn't." On September 1, Sawyer related how after her White House session with Bush, "I also asked him about this idea that the whole economy could be torqued by this in such a way. And I said, 'will you call for tax increases, in fact, if that's required?'" For more details: www.mrc.org

     The MRC's Brian Boyd caught Gibson's last question to Bartlett, who appeared from the White House lawn to preview President Bush's upcoming prime time address. Gibson's questions, and some of Bartlett's answers, during the 7am half hour interview on the September 15 GMA:

     # Gibson: "Tonight, President Bush will be in Louisiana and will address the nation on Hurricane Katrina. An important speech for the President because there has been such criticism of the federal response to the storm. So, we turn to Dan Bartlett, counselor to the President, at the White House....Dan, I feel like I'm quoting polls every time you're on the broadcast, but the President's approval ratings, as you know, in free fall. Is this a speech that he should have given a lot earlier?"

     # Gibson: "The President says he takes responsibility for failures in the federal response to Katrina. The just replaced head of FEMA in the New York Times this morning says 'things were going to hell in a handbasket.' So what's the President taking responsibility for?"

     # Gibson: "There are reports you had to show the President the network newscast four days after the storm hit to impress upon him how bad this was. Did the President miss the severity, the enormity of this in the early days?"
     Bartlett: "Absolutely not, Charlie, and that's a very misleading report based when I showed, the fact that I showed the President one set of newscasts on Thursday in no way shape or form suggests that he did not see what was going on throughout the week. The President knew very well what was going on. He understood the severity of the storm. He was impressing upon not only the federal government but was really impressing upon state and local officials to unify a chain of command so we could get better crisp, crisper, more effective security decisions made on the ground on those critical days: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday after that. But again, Charlie, looking back on this we're all going to be able to step back and say that things could have been done differently. And it's critical that we fix the problems and move forward in a constructive way."

     # Gibson: "But are you going to maintain that we can pay for this, we can pay for the war in Iraq, and we can pay for the rising healthcare costs in this country without raising taxes? These are astronomical dollars we're talking about that will cost the federal treasury?"
     Bartlett: "Well, Charlie, it will. And the fact of the matter is when our nation faces these types of emergencies, it unfortunately requires us to deficit spend. It's nothing that anybody in Washington, or anywhere for that matter, likes to do, but it's necessary. But I will say, Charlie, the worst thing we could do right now is raise taxes on the American people. As you know and your network has been covering, the American people have been hit with an enormous tax in the size of gas prices increasing all across the country. We shouldn't be adding to that burden on families all across America by raising their taxes which would only hurt the economy, hurt the economy in the gulf coast region and only set back our efforts to help people get back on their feet."

     On FNC's Fox and Friends a few minutes earlier, the MRC's Michael Rule observed, after Bartlett outlined Bush's proposals, E.D. Hill warned him: "You've got to work in partnership with Congress too because I'm telling you, I don't think Americans want to pay '70s era taxes, where are we gonna cut the money to fund this? I mean it sounds like a wonderful idea and it's not that people don't support it, but where are politicians going to say, 'you know what, I'll drop this project in my district so that we can put this money into New Orleans'?"
     Bartlett: "Well I think that's a very good point and President Bush has sent up budgets in the past that have taken real cuts at the type of wasteful spending that we've seen in Washington for way too long and I think it is almost a false choice to say it has to be either or between fighting and winning the war on terror and funding the aftermath of Katrina. We have to do both as a country, it's in our national priority that means we're gonna have to cut spending elsewhere to make sure that we are fiscally prudent with the taxpayers dollars, so we're gonna have to be working closely with Congress to make sure we put forward budgets and spending proposals that reflect the times we live in, there's no question about that."
     Hill quipped: "Well Congress spending less money is like a really warm day in International Falls Minnesota. What about taxes? Would the President be willing to increase taxes to pay for this rebuilding?"
     Bartlett: "There's always discussions about raising taxes, and the thing we have to think about is that right when businesses and people are trying to get back on their feet in the gulf coast region, the worst thing we can do to these families is to pop them with another tax..."

     # On Friday night Ted Turner will be a guest on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman. He was scheduled for Thursday, but CBS flipped shows when they decided to delay Letterman by 26 minutes in order to accommodate President Bush's speech.

-- Brent Baker