Bush Visits Bridge Site

President Bush spent part of his Saturday visiting the site of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis:

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Flying over Minneapolis' collapsed highway bridge, President Bush got a bird's-eye view Saturday of the concrete slabs and twisted steel that once spanned the Mississippi River.

The president's Marine One helicopter circled the site several times during a 10-minute tour, allowing him to gaze down upon the muddy waters where some bodies are trapped. He saw pieces of the highway littered with vehicles, including a school bus hugging a guard rail. Rescue boats below helped in the search for victims.

Later, Bush put on an orange and red hard hat and walked around the bridge site. Yards from the school bus, he stood with Gary Babineau, a construction worker who helped rescue children after the collapse.

Bush also planned to receive briefings on recovery efforts and meet with families and some of the victims.

Still criticized for his administration's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina, Bush hurried to Minnesota soon after the I-35W bridge buckled on Wednesday. The collapse sent dozens of cars sliding in the Mississippi River, killing at least five people and injuring about 100 others.

It only took the AP five paragraphs to work in the Katrina reference. They even admitted near the end of the article that the White House response to every disaster is now measured against the response to Katrina.

What purpose does it serve for the president to walk around a collapsed bridge? Purely political. The president has become the Consoler-in-Chief, and while there are plenty of government bureaucrats capable of inspecting the site and reporting back to the White House, it's now become expected that the Chief Executive will do a walk-around within days of the event. No president will ever miss that opportunity after the Katrina criticism.