George W. Bush, No. 43
8 October 2023
New York City, NY
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| George W. Bush |
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
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