Joseph Biden, No. 46

14 December 2024

Wilmington, DE

 

 

With a little help from one of Cathy’s co-workers, we were able to do our own version of “The Amazing Race” as we checked out Biden’s Wilmington.

 

First, we hunted down his house on winding, tree-lined, two-lane Barley Mill Road in the Wilmington suburbs that featured big, stone houses on big, leafy lots.

 

The Biden house is not visible from the street — Google Maps shows it down the long driveway a bit — nor would you be able to see much of it past the fencing and Secret Service gatehouse anyway. A big, white house stands on the left of the driveway, which we assume is used for either Secret Service agents or guests.

 

Driveway of Biden's home

After a quick stop to take a look – we were afraid the Secret Service wouldn’t take
too kindly to a prolonged stop and we could feel eyes on us from the darkened windows – we hunted down the Jos. A Bank in Greenville where Biden buys his suits, about five minutes from the house.

 

Jos A Bank interior

The men’s retailer is in the middle of the nondescript, brick Greenville Crossing shopping center. We asked one of the associates if Biden really shopped there.  He directed us to a senior manager who told us “he (Biden) was just here.”  He said that they can tell when a visit is imminent: his “henchmen” suddenly pop in the door to check out the place and clear it.  (We didn’t ask how prospective buyers feel about being ejected from the store.) Biden usually comes in with “an entourage.”  But sometimes “he comes by himself.”  “Does his wife ever come?” we asked.  “Sometimes,” he replied.  Tom selected some dress shirts to buy, two for $70, one light blue and one dark blue.  He asked the young clerk if Biden was popular in the Wilmington area.  “Not really,” he replied.

 

We then diverted to have lunch at McQuinn’s Pub nearby — a tasty French onion soup and salad. Our waitress,

Enjoying French onion soup
at McQuinn's Pub

like the Jos. A. Bank clerk, said she wasn’t necessarily a big fan of her hometown president and thought he was mentally failing.

 

Next up was Biden’s church, St. Joseph on the Brandywine Catholic Church, also close to the Biden property.  (Is it a coincidence that President Joseph Biden buys his clothes from Joseph A. Banks and attends St. Joseph Church?)  Located near the intersection of Kennett Pike and Barley Mill Road, the church complex houses the church, rectory, family center and cemetery. While near a major intersection, it is surrounded by roads and fields, not crowded by other development.

 

St. Joseph on the Brandywine
      Catholic Church

The church is small and simple — with beautiful, long stained-glass windows — and looks very much like a village church you would find in England or Ireland. There is probably a good reason for that — the original church was built in the mid-19th century by Irish workers men who worked for the DuPont gunpowder mills nearby. (The present structure was built in 1947.)  A tribute with a Celtic cross is inscribed in the walkway in front of the church. It reads: “In tribute to the Irish workmen who built this church.”  

 

We also explored a bit of the cemetery and found son Beau Biden’s gravesite. He died of brain cancer in 2015. The large upright tomb stone says “Biden” on one side and his name and birth and death dates as well as “Husband, father, brother, son” on the other. There also is another stone marker in the ground that lists his military service.

 

We didn’t look for the graves of Biden’s first wife and 1-year-old daughter who were killed in a car crash in 1972. (Their two young sons, Beau and Hunter, were injured in that crash.)  It turns out that Biden and his family visited the church and cemetery for a private Mass to honor them just three days after our visit.

 

Then we went to the Wilmington Amtrak station, now known as the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station, where

    Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station

“Amtrak Joe” caught the train every day to travel to Washington when he was a senator. We found a plaque and small signage referring to Mr. Biden near the doors to the station.  Near the shoe shine chair, there is also a photograph of Biden with one of the attendants.  The historic train station, built in 1907 and named for Biden in 2011, is a long, beautiful red brick building with a clock tower.

 

***

 

Biden’s first term in the senate began in January 1972 when he was only 29 years old.  The accident that took the lives of his wife and daughter had just occurred a month earlier.  To keep a family life with his remaining children, Biden would commute to Washington from that Amtrak station every day.  He would continue to serve in the Senate until he became Vice President during the Obama administration.  

 

Biden unseated Donald Trump to become president in 2020.  The country was in the throes of the Covid pandemic with high death rates and unemployment peaking at a staggering 14.9% – the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.  With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, money was injected into the economy allowing a rapid recovery with unemployment eventually falling to about 4%.  However, worldwide supply line bottlenecks, pent up demand for goods and services, and large stimulus funding in the U.S. and elsewhere, inflation spiked worldwide.  In the United States, annual inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022.  But by election day in November 2024, it had dropped to 2.7%.

 

But the damage to the Biden administration was done.  His job approval rating was below 40 for most of his presidency.  He decided to run for a second term that he would begin at the age of 82.  That was four years older than Ronald Reagan was at the end of his presidency.  Biden’s abysmal performance during a summer 2024 debate with Donald Trump eventually led him to suspend his campaign.  It was later revealed that Biden’s family and staff had hidden the extent of his decline to the public. Biden eventually decided not to run in late July, but that did not leave much time for his chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, to mount a winning campaign.

***

 

Wilmington 
Riverwalk

Before we left Wilmington, we stopped at the Wilmington Riverwalk, a walkway along the Christina River not far from the Amtrak station.  We thought there would be a Christmas market at the Riverfront Market building but there were only a few lonely food venders and not many shoppers.  We did find a place to buy a hot chocolate and walked in the brisk air along the riverfront.  There were not many other walkers out.  The fun looking eateries along the walkway were closed but are reportedly packed when the weather is nice.  Of interest was Constitution Yards with outdoor seating, volleyball areas and (to Cathy’s delight) containership containers reconfigured as storefronts.  But all were closed.  There were also three large cranes from the former Dravo Shipyard that were used to build World War II LCMs (landing craft) and offload cargo.  In the summer there is a concert series in summer at Dravo Shipyard.

DIRECTIONS

Wilmington, DE is located adjacent to I-95.  The closest major airport is Philadelphia International Airport 22 miles north.   

 

REFERENCES

 

New York Times.  2025.  How Biden’s Inner Circle Protected a Faltering President.  17 January 2025.

 

Websites

wikipedia

https://www.whitehousehistory.org/bios/joseph-r-biden-jr

Whitehouse.gov

                                                              

Donald Trump, No. 45

15 October 2024

New York, NY

 

Official portrait
(The White House Historical Association)

On a chilly October night, we journeyed to the place where it all began, the golden escalators of Trump Tower.  On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump descended the gleaming escalators and announced that he would be running for president as a Republican.  He would go on to become the most divisive president in modern presidential history. 

 

Trump was born into a wealth on June 14, 1946.  His father, Fred Trump, had amassed a fortune in real estate in New York City.  Trump grew up to become the president of the real estate company which he renamed The Trump Organization in 1973.  The headquarters, of course, is Trump Tower.

The golden escalator

 

We entered what we thought was a 68-story office building and discovered that it is also a shrine to Trump.  The entrance was guarded by a handful of New York City police officers.  Gaining entrance was not a problem with nary a glance our way.  The building was very quiet (it was 8 p.m.) and all of the shops were closed.  Tom asked someone who looked like an off-duty worker if you “ever get busy?”  He replied, “Today’s Tuesday. Maybe tomorrow. Happy hour.”

 

The accessible floors are the entrance floor atrium and the lower ground floor, a golden escalator ride down.  The entrance floor features many large American flags, and plenty of photos of the president.  A gift shop sells Trump books, Trump water bottles, Trump baseball hats, Trump glasses, Trump towels, and Trump bags. 

 

The ground floor has many Trump-themed shops including Trump Grill, Trump Sweets, Trump Pizza, and Trump Café.  All were closed.  At Trump Sweets you can buy a “Make America Sweet Again” gingerbread cookie in the shape of Trump.  At the Trump Grill you can treat yourself to an Ivanka Salad that consists of tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions, mixed olives, feta cheese, romaine lettuce, and Greek dressing for $18.  (Cathy wondered why Ivanka is the only Trump child featured on the menu.)

A Trump shop on the ground floor was selling more Trump baseball hats (this time with “Fight, fight, fight” emblazoned on them), Trump key chains, Trump playing cards, etc.  

Directory

 

A Trump clothing store was selling Trump woolen hats, Trump vests, Trump bomber jackets, Trump hoodies, Trump crewnecks, Trump tank tops, Trump slippers and much more…  (True story: Tom bought a Trump belt about 25 years ago and it fell apart pretty quickly.)

An Indian American man was there with his family.  Tom asked him,  “What do you think?” (of this place)” “Pretty good,” he replied.  It seems that this was not his first visit to the building.  

 

When we had entered the atrium, we noticed two people sitting on a bench in the building.  One was a middle-aged woman in a red MAGA baseball cap with luggage piled around her. She was deep in conversation with a bearded man in a blue coat and shorts.  We heard Trump’s name mentioned.  They were there when we left an hour later.  Cathy thought they might be waiting for one of the Trump family to leave the building. The building is closed to the public at 10 p.m. so they couldn’t be camping out there.

One of the many
Trump themed shops

 

Trump’s presidency was by marked by the world-wide COVID pandemic, large tax cuts, and crack downs on illegal immigration.  Trump’s border wall was partially constructed, although not paid for by Mexico as promised during his campaign. 

 

His presidency was also characterized by tacit approval of the activities of white supremacists, cozying up to autocratic leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orban, and two impeachments (but no convictions).

 

It ended with a loss to Joe Biden in 2020, an attack by his followers on the U.S. Capital on January 4, 2021, and the second of his two impeachments.  Trump and his supporters claimed the election was stolen. (No credible evidence ever showed this.)  Trump never conceded the 2020 election nor did he attend the inauguration of his successor—a presidential tradition.  He sculked out of the White House to his home at Mar-a-Logo in his new state of residence, Florida, along with top secret documents that he illegally possessed.

 

He spent the next four years fighting lawsuits and was eventually convicted of 34 counts of paying hush money to a porn star to aid his 2016 election bid.  He was never sentenced.

 

As of this writing, he was reelected on November 5, 2024 and will be sworn in on January 20, 2025.  

 

DIRECTIONS

 

Trump Tower is located at 725 5^th Avenue in New York City between 56^th and 57^th Streets.  The closest subway stop is the 57^thStreet Station. The public has access to the building between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.

REFERENCES 

 

The White House Historical Association, whitehousehistory.org

 

 

 

                                                                 

Barack Obama, No. 44

22 June 2024

Chicago, IL

 

Presidential portrait 
in National Portrait
Gallery, 
Washington, DC

In 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr. predicted the eventuality of a Black president.  At the time, he was being interviewed by a local Atlanta TV station and said that he believed that “in the not too distant future,” a Black could be elected president of the United States.  Four decades later, that vision would become a reality with the election of Barak Obama in 2008. Had he lived, MLK would have been 79 years old that year.  

 

In June 2024, we flew from our home in Maryland to Chicago to see some of the sites associated with President Obama.  We flew into Midway Airport, grabbed a car and headed to Grant Park next to Lake Michigan, the site of Obama’s 2008 post-election

Grant Park

victory speech.  Obama, dressed in a dark suit with a red striped tie, gave a speech in front of a crowd of about a quarter million people (Wikipedia).  The crowd were reveling in the meteoritic rise of young president-elect. His first words: “If anyone out there still who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.”  The electricity of that night has faded into history and the park we saw was largely deserted.  Not finding a parking spot, we stopped by the side of the road; Cathy hopped out of the car and snapped a couple pictures before moving on.

 

How had a 47-year-old first term senator made it to the White House so quickly?  

 

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961 to a Kenyan father and a White mother.  Both his father and mother were students at the University of Hawaii.  The marriage did not last partially because Barack Obama, Sr. was already married with a wife and child in Kenya (Moore, 2007).  Barack’s mother later married an Indonesian so the family lived there for several years. That marriage was also troubled and Barack and his mother moved back to Hawaii.  (Moore, 2007).  

 

Young Barack read ravenously and became interested in helping the downtrodden.  He attended college first in California, then in New York after which he became a community organizer (Moore, 2007).  It was not long before he was working on the South side of Chicago—the area we visited.  To have better success at organizing, he sought a law degree.  He attended Harvard Law School as an older student. He excelled and was eventually elected as the first Black editor of the Harvard Law Review.   

 

Plaque in Hyde Park

Between semesters, Obama interned at a large Chicago law firm.  His mentor was Michelle Robinson, a lawyer at the firm.  The young lawyers took an interest in each other. Their first date was to a grab ice cream at a Bascom Robins, our next stop.  The Baskin-Robbins in a small strip center in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago. At the corner of 53rd and Dorchester streets, a large, pinkish rock with a brass plaque signifies the momentous event. It includes an Obama quote: “I kissed her, and it tasted of chocolate.”  We couldn’t linger because we were illegally parked.  

 

Obama and Michelle were married on October 18, 1992.  We hunted down their first home, a first-floor condo at 5450 East View Park where they lived from 1994 to 2006 or 2007. This was the longest they have lived in any one place, according to a resident who now lives in the building.  The condo complex is 3 floors and is right across the street from Lake Michigan — location, location, location — but the condos have seen better days and could use some sprucing up.  We talked to a woman sitting in a folding chair grazing on an ice cream sandwich.  She lives on the third floor directly above the Obama’s.  We asked her if Obama was still popular.  “As popular as any person who was president eight years ago,” she replied.

 

Not far away, but in a much higher-end neighborhood stands the Obamas’ current home at 5046 South

Outside the Obama house

Greenwood Avenue. It’s a pretty, residential street, lined with trees and large, stately homes, some fenced in with wrought iron. The Obamas’ entire block is barricaded by the Secret Service, with signs warning motorists not to enter the street: “Do not enter. Presidential traffic only,” they caution. But you can walk to check it out — a large brick mansion resembling a bungalow (a very large bungalow) with white trim. A wrought-iron fence borders the property, which features stately trees and shrubbery.  We didn’t see any Secret Service people but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t see us.  A couple from Mexico was viewing the house along with us.  They didn’t speak any English so our conversation was limited.  We didn’t think to ask them why they would be interested in his house.  It would be odd for an American to want to see the home of an ex-Mexican president. 

 

Obama served as an Illinois State Senator from 1997 to 2004.  In 2000 he ran for Congress but didn’t win.  In 2004, he ran for Senate and won big with 70% of the vote—it was the largest landslide that election year.  Seen as a rising star, Obama was asked to be the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention nominating John Kerry. It was an exhilarating speech.  He speaks of hope thus: “It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. The audacity of hope!”  This speech made him highly visible and he started thinking about the presidency. He served only two years in the senate 2006-2008 before deciding to make a presidential run.  Obama had a hard primary fight but prevailed over Hillary Rodham Clinton.  

 

During his campaign, Obama’s relationship with Reverend Jeremy Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ came to light in a troubling way.  Reverend Wright, Obama’s minister and friend for 20 years, was found to have made negative statements about the United States including blaming the Unite States for the 9/11 attacks.  In spite of the friendship as well as their wedding at his church, the  Obamas cut their ties with the Reverend and the candidacy was saved (Moore, 2007).

 

Trinity United Church of Christ

We found the church on 400 W 95^th Street, a lower-income neighborhood, with small, one story houses lining the street. The church is a huge light brick building that looks like a megachurch, and features a bookstore. Down the street a couple blocks we found the much smaller - and older Jeremiah Wright Daycare Center, which Cathy thinks was the original church and was converted to a daycare center after the new church was built.

 

Obama won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote (365-173) over Senator John McCain.  

 

President Obama’s first order of business was to stabilize the teetering economy from what became known as the Great Recession.  Congress passed several mammoth bank and auto bailout bills as well as a large infrastructure bill.  It would take years for the economy to recover.  

 

The next order of businesses was to fight for increased health care coverage for the underserved.  With a Democratic House and Senate, the administration was able to push through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  It became known as “Obamacare.”  It is still going strong today with 45 million people using it (hhs.gov).  

 

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden was discovered in a Pakistani compound.  Obama sent Seal Team Six to capture or kill him.  In a successfully operation on May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed.  His body was identified then taken aboard a Navy ship for burial at sea (history.com).   

 

Obama was reelected in 2012 but was stymied by the Republicans who had taken control in 2010.    

 

Our last stop of the day was at the uncompleted Obama presidential center, near the Science & Industry Building

Presidential center 
in progress

in Jackson Park. The museum structure is currently a gray, hulking monstrosity reaching up into the sky over the lake. It is slated to open in 2026.

 

DIRECTIONS

 

The Obama sites are mostly located on the South Side of Chicago.

 

REFERENCES

 

Life Books. 2008. The American Journey of Barack Obama.  Little Brown and Company.  New York, NY.

 

Keynote Address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  July 27, 2004.

Moore, Kathryn.  2007.  The American President.  Fall River Press.  New York, NY.

 

Obama, Michelle.  2018.  Becoming.  Crown.  New York, NY.

 

Smith, C.  2005.  Presidents:  Every Question Answered.  Metro Books.  New York, NY.

 

 

 

Websites

Wikipedia

History.com

HHS.gov

                                                                 George W. Bush, No. 43

8 October 2023

New York City, NY

 

George W. Bush

For George W. Bush’s presidency, we headed to the World Trade Center memorial and museum in New York City. After all, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were THE defining moment of his presidency. (Ironically our visit to the World Trade Center Memorial coincided with Israel’s 9/11 moment the day before, a massacre of more than 1,400 people and the kidnapping of 240 additional people by Hamas terrorists.)

 

On Oct. 8, we hopped aboard Amtrak at BWI, rode to Penn Station, and then took the subway to our hotel, conveniently located across Church Street from the museum. An hour after arriving at Penn Station, we were heading to the memorials where the Twin Towers, North and South, once stood. 

 

Now, square infinity pools mark the footprints of the towers, with the names of those who died carved into the gray steel ledges along the pools’ edges. A thin veil of water falls from the top to 20 feet below, and then continues its descent to another 10-foot drop in the middle of the pool. The etched names include those who were in the towers, those in the planes that crashed into the towers, and all the first responders who died trying to save them: firefighters, police, Secret Service, FBI, Port Authority. On this day, white roses poked out from some of the names. American flags saluted above others. We were deeply moved as the new WTC tower gleamed in the sun in the bright blue sky, looking down upon us. 

Memorial pool

 

However, others apparently weren’t similarly moved, and we were appalled by some of the photos being taken. Group pictures, family pictures, selfies in front of the memorial. Smiling. Giving a “thumbs up” sign. Really? Even worse were the teens and young women taking “sexy” shots for their social media posts.

 

As we were scribbling notes into our notebooks, a 50-ish man in a sport jacket and slacks approached. He was wearing a lanyard. “Can I help you?” he asked. “I see you’re writing things down.” He sounded gruff. We were wary. Who is he?  Cathy said “no.”  I said “yes.”  He pointed at each of us. “You say yes, and she says no?  Which is it?” It turned out Dennis is a retired New York City detective who had served at the precinct on the corner the day of the attack. He is now a volunteer at the memorial. Although intimating at first, he ended up being friendly and talkative. He told us that the waterfall is turned off every night and a crew cleans out the leaves. He told us he was nearing the end of his shift on Sept. 11 and was escorting a “cuffed” prisoner. When he saw the plane hit the tower (not sure which one), he let the prisoner go telling him, “This looks bad.”  Dennis spent the next nine months recovering and identifying remains and notifying the families. We asked him where George Bush stood atop the debris field and made his famous bullhorn speech to the workers at the site. Dennis wasn’t sure.  

 

***

 

George W. Bush was born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Conn., shortly after his father returned from WWII. He was the first of six children. Within two years of this birth, the family moved to Texas.

 

George was the likeable, charismatic family clown.  He had few cares and made friends quickly.  He was never a serious student and didn’t like to read.  By the time he followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps by attending Yale, he was partying and drinking heavily.

 

He wasn’t sure what do after college, so he joined the Air National Guard as a pilot. Although not interested in politics, he was pushed to bank on his family name and run for Congress. He lost. 

 

George’s drinking continued and in 1976 he was arrested for drunken driving. Family friend Billy Graham was tapped to intercede. Through their many conversations and prayer together, George found religion and stopped drinking. His new wife, Laura Welsh, also helped stabilize him.   

 

By 1989, George was part owner of the Texas Rangers and life was good. In 1994, he surprised his family by announcing that he was going to run against popular Texas Gov. Ann Richards. The family was busy helping Jeb Bush with his own gubernatorial run in Florida. The family was shocked when George won and Jeb lost.  

 

George ended up being a popular governor and focused on crime, education and tax reform. He proclaimed June 10 as Jesus Day. His popularity was above 70% and he was easily reelected in 1998.  

 

Then he turned his attention to the presidency.  

 

As always, his well-connected family came to help.  Since George had little international experience, his father, George H.W. Bush, suggested putting his old secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, on the ticket as his running mate. Brother Jeb had finally won the governorship of Florida and helped George campaign there. When the 2000 election resulted in a deadlock, Jeb’s influence in Florida was key to navigating the state court system. It was Jeb’s administration that certified George’s victory, and Jeb signed the Florida certification document.  

 

***

 

We moved inside to the museum, where we didn’t have nearly enough time to explore before it closed for the day. The museum is set below ground in the WTC complex. It is composed of the North Tower area, South Tower area and the center passage, which is where visitors start after moving down the ramp and the introduction. It is dark but open and airy. Along the way, maps show where you are standing in relation to the towers.

 

Some of the artifacts include mangled steel columns from the towers, Ladder Company #3’s firetruck with the back and ladder warped and melted from falling debris, and part of the crushed transmission tower from the top of the North Building. One wall contains hundreds of blue tiles created by artists trying to remember what color of blue the sky was that warm, beautiful September day.

 

The center complex also includes the Vesey stairs, known was the Survivors Stairs, which was an escape route for hundreds of people in 5 World Trade Center. The granite stairs connected the Twin Towers’ Plaza to Vesey Street below. It also features concrete-enclosed steel boxes that held the steel columns anchoring the towers and the slurry wall, which was constructed when the towers were built to keep the Hudson River from flooding the site. Safety officials were worried the wall would not hold after the attacks and create even more tragedy, but it held.

 

Slurry wall (l) and
Last Column (r)

The center passage also features the “The Last Column,” which was one of 47 columns supporting the inner core of the South Tower. It is decorated with pictures of first responders, spray paint, regular paint, prayer cards and other tributes. It was the last column taken down during the cleanup effort, and it was draped with an American flag and loaded onto a flatbed truck, saluted by hundreds of first responders as it was driven away.

 

The North Tower area, where we headed first, focuses on the victims. A room holds photos of all the victims and the area displays some of their treasured possessions. The annual reading of the names is piped in through the audio system, which Cathy found particularly depressing.

 

The South Tower holds the “historical exhibition,” including photos, audio and video of the attacks and the day itself. It also looks into the days, weeks and months after the attacks. Among the displays, it has reports from various TV stations, interviews with onlookers and those who survived, audio from the frantic 911 calls, and hundreds of photos and artifacts.

 

Some of the more interesting, below-the-radar items include a display of New York newspaper front pages that morning, before the attacks. They were pretty mundane, with stories leading into the coming New York mayor’s election and a story about fashion.

 

Also exhibited was Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s schedule for the day:

“8 a.m.: Breakfast meeting

9:30 a.m.: Photo op. Canceled due to terrorist attack.

9:45 a.m.: Staff meeting. Canceled due to terrorist attack.”

And so on. 

 

A note from the New York MTA reads: “There will be no trains running at all today — anywhere.”

 

The rooms, overloading the senses with so much information stuffed into a relatively small space, include a timeline of events that winds along the walls.

 

Portions from the beginning of the timeline:

8:46 a.m.: Flight 11 hits WTC 1, the North Tower between the 93rd and 99th floors.

8:50 a.m.: President Bush, reading to elementary school students in Sarasota, Florida, is alerted. His aides assure him it’s an accident.

9:03 a.m.: Flight 175 hits the South Tower between the 77th and 85th floors.

9:05 a.m.: Bush is alerted.

9:19 a.m.: Barbara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, who is on Flight 77 that would later hit the Pentagon, calls him.

9:42 a.m.: The Federal Aviation Administration grounds all flights and orders them to land immediately, regardless of their destination.

9:45 a.m.: Bush boards Air Force One at the Sarasota airport and is flown around for hours.

 

The attacks were the first time in history that the continuity-in-government procedures to protect high-level government officials were used.

 

There is little mention of President Bush at the museum.  This Bush quote is included: “I’ve directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.”  There is also a display of Bush’s “x” list.   Bush kept a list of the most-wanted terrorists; when one was captured or killed, Bush would put an x across the name.  

 

We didn’t see that famous photo of Bush and bullhorn atop the rubble pile on Sept. 14. 

 

***

 

People can blame George for not taking Osama bin Laden’s threats seriously, but September 11 was a true “black swan.” The term was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a risk theorist. All swans were once thought to be white until a black species was discovered in Australia in the 1600s. Taleb described a black swan as an unimaginable high-consequence event that in retrospect can be rationalized (Taleb, 2007). The attacks of September 11 fit the definition.  

 

The road from 9/11 led to an attack on Afghanistan to capture or kill bin Laden and then another ill-advised attack on Iraq to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein — who had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.  Bush didn’t make any distinction between terrorism and countries that sponsored terrorism, even if unassociated with 9/11. The administration presented “evidence” that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which were never found.  In Afghanistan, the Taliban were routed but bin Laden was nowhere to be found.  In Iraq, Saddam Hussein was captured by the U.S. military in 2003, tried and executed in 2006.  It was a shock to hear Bush say in his second term that the way out of Afghanistan and Iraq would be left to the next president.  (The U.S. didn’t leave Iraq until 2011 and Afghanistan until 2021.)  

 

Besides executing the Global War on Terror, Bush governed as a “compassionate conservative” and emphasized returning tax money to the people. He pushed through two large tax cuts.

 

As his term was coming to a close in 2008, the economy imploded in what became known as the “Great Recession.” Rock bottom mortgage rates and lax banking regulations led to financial institutions creating incentives for homeowners to buy homes they couldn’t afford.  The resulting loans were bundled together and sold and traded worldwide.  When it became apparent that many of the bundled loans were worth far less than their original costs, banks were exposed. Nobody wanted the bundled securities, and they were sold off at pennies to the dollar. When Bear Stearns failed in 2008, the rout was on.  

 

By the time George left office on Jan. 20, 2009, The Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen from 14,000 to 7,900, a catastrophic drop for families and retirees with stock portfolios.  

 

DIRECTIONS

 

The National September 11 Memorial and Museum is located at 180 Greenwich St, New York, NY next to the Oculus Center in Lower Manhattan.

 

REFERENCES

 

Schweizer, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer.  2004.  The Bushes:  Portrait of a Dynasty.  Doubleday.  New York, NY. 

 

Smith, C.  2005.  Presidents:  Every Question Answered.  Metro Books.  New York, NY.

 

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas.  2007.  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.  Random House.  New York, NY.

 

Woodward, Bob.  2002.  Bush at War.  Simon & Schuster.  New York, NY.

 

Videos

 

History Channel.  2005.  The Presidents:  The Lives and Legacies of the 43 Leaders of the United States.

 

Websites

 

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-rare-bird-how-europeans-got-the-black-swan-so-wrong-161654