Gail Collins has some solid snark today:
This is not the first time Bush’s attempts to calm our fears redoubled our nightmares. His first speech after 9/11 — that two-minute job on the Air Force base — was so stilted that the entire country felt like heading for the nearest fallout shelter. After Katrina, of course, it took forever to pry him out of Crawford, and then he more or less read a laundry list of Goods Being Shipped to the Flood Zone and delivered some brief assurances that things would work out.
O.K., so he’s not good at first-day response. Or second. Third can be a problem, too. But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before.
That is all well and good, and amusing, no doubt, but it is clear Gail Collins doesn’t get it. Bush and the Bush administration really aren’t going to do anything- they aren’t big on governing. This last eight years hasn’t been about governing, it has been little more than the world’s boldest snatch and grab. The people who bear the burden for a large portion of the current financial crisis made their money and are off the hook, and have moved on to more important things. Like raking in tons of cash on oil futures. Or lobbying against the inheritance tax. Or trying to get the tax cuts permanent despite the several hundred billion dollar deficits we are running.
So while Gail Collins may say some amusing things, she clearly doesn’t get it. I can’t blame her, though. It took me a while to figure it out, myself.
*** Update ***
Apparently, I am clear on the concept, but not clear on the lingo. The phrase is smash and grab, not snatch and grab.