New York Times and Washington Post Make Cheap Shots at Bush in Hurricane Coverage

CNN's Jack Cafferty isn't the only one taking cheap shots at President Bush for taking a vacation in August, before Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi and Louisiana. The New York Times and Washington Post are doing it, too. From an August 31 New York Times editorial about Katrina:

As the levees of Lake Pontchartrain gave way, flooding New Orleans, it seemed pretty clear that in this case, government did not live up to the job. But this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation. [Emphasis added] All the focus now must be on rescuing the survivors...

From a Washington Post editorial, also dated August 31:

For years New Orleans has issued dire warnings about the unique threat a powerful hurricane posed to the city; with floods inundating 80 percent of the Crescent City yesterday, it is clear that those warnings were not hyperbole. Characteristically compassionate in times of crisis, the nation is rushing aid to the storm-damaged area. President Bush, who has maintained his weeks-long holiday schedule without regard to the bloodshed in Iraq, is breaking off his summer idyll two days early [Emphasis added] to tend to the fallout from Katrina. The American Red Cross has mobilized thousands of volunteers...

Neither editorial attempted to prove that President Bush’s vacation was relevant to the points being made; the New York Times even mused that this is the “wrong moment” to editorialize about Bush’s vacation -- and then did it anyway.