Looking Back

Maybe now is not the time to be thinking about W., but this brief Vanity Fair story written by a guy who was college friends with one of Bush's daughters and invited several times to the White House is a great read.

One month after the worst attack in U.S. history, George W. Bush watched a 100-minute-long Anthony Hopkins film called Hearts in Atlantis.

It is an awful movie, and as it drags on I feel increasingly uneasy. Surely the president should be doing something else. Occasionally he gets a phone call from Andy Card, his chief of staff, who, as I understand it, is in the West Wing meeting with the head of the F.A.A. to determine when Washington’s Reagan National Airport will be safe to completely re-open (some flights began operating earlier in the week). Each time the phone rings, I hope the president will excuse himself to join them. But he doesn’t. Over the phone, the president tells the men to “get that airport opened up!” and then heads to bed.