Caked With Compassion

Co-opting a tone and itinerary more typical of the Edwards campaign, John McCain’s ‘It’s Time for Action’ tour generated these images Tuesday from a factory in Youngstown.  It’s always fascinating how a candidate, simply through juxtaposition with physical decrepitude, can expect to pile up empathy credits — no matter how suspect their social proposals and record.

Expressing all the compassion in the world — in direct contradiction to his less than commensurate legislative response –  McBenevolent also paid a visit to New Orleans yesterday.

What other sites have taken pains to point out is Mac’s social calendar on August 29, 2005.  As you can tell from the Democracy Now headlines, Hurricane Katrina had made landfall at 4am that morning (Arizona time), a mass evacuation had been ordered the day before, thousands of people had already taken up shelter in the Superdome, and Bush — still two days away from his famous N.O. fly over, was descending the stairs of Air Force One to eat birthday cake and celebrate with John McCain on his turning 69.

I should add, I don’t consider the near-loss of icing as being visual significant in any way.  The growing visual record of McCain — like a yo-yo — embracing Bush one minute, then slamming him the next, of course, is a different story.



McCain And Katrina Ravaged New Orleans: Facts vs Spin (Huffington Post)

Not Another Compassionate Conservative (My Left Wing)

Effective juxtaposition of Bush road trip side-by-side with unfolding New Orleans disaster (Hughes For America)

The Week Bush Lost New Orleans (BAGnewsNotes)

Katrina timeline (wikipedia)



(image 1 & 2: Mary Altaffer/AP.  Youngstown, Ohio. April 22, 2008. via YahooNews. image 3 & 4:  Paul Morse/White House. Aug. 29, 2005. Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.  whitehouse.gov)