02:53 PM CDT on Friday, September 23, 2005

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- President Bush turned to hurricane management mode on Friday, pledging at his administration’s disaster headquarters to keep a close eye on the federal response to Hurricane Rita.

Bush had planned to go to San Antonio but dropped that visit because search and rescue teams there were being relocated as the huge storm shifted course, the White House said. Bush still was going to Colorado to monitor Rita’s progress from the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs. The facility was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as the military’s homeland security command center.

Bush was trying to walk a line between helping in a crisis and being seen as interfering. “There will be no risk of me getting in the way, I promise you,” the president said.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was repositioning search and rescue teams closer to the storm “and we didn’t want to slow that decision up in any way.”

The president was expected to make additional hurricane-related stops throughout the weekend. But as the storm moved toward an expected landfall along the Texas-Louisiana coast, the White House kept his schedule “very flexible” and offered no word about where he was going or even when he would return to Washington.

At the White House, Bush’s Cabinet met to begin an internal assessment of how the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina went wrong.

The high level of White House activity and presidential travel related to the hurricane in the days leading up to Rita’s landfall were a marked contrast to the period before Katrina’s strike further east a month ago. Polls show that Bush’s job approval rating, already down all summer because of concern about his Iraq policy and rising gas prices, has remained stuck at the lowest levels of his presidency through the hurricane crises.

Bush said he had good reasons for traveling as the storm approached.

He said he wanted to see firsthand how the federal, state and local governments work together as a disaster occurs. In Katrina’s wake, some federal officials attempted to point the blame for the sluggish response away from Washington and toward lower levels of government, suggesting evacuation orders, information and requests for help hadn’t been communicated well.

And he said he wanted a closer look, from the Northern Command, at the military’s hand in domestic crises. In a speech to the nation from New Orleans last week, Bush urged “greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces”—which now are barred by law from performing any domestic law enforcement functions. He didn’t specify what he meant, but some have suggested since that the legal limits should be loosened and the White House has not ruled that out.

“NORTHCOM is the main entity that ... that uses federal assets, federal troops to interface with local and state government,” he said. “I want to watch that relationship. It’s an important relationship, and I need to understand how it works better.”

During his visit to FEMA in Washington, Bush received a video briefing on Rita from the National Hurricane Center and told employees working overtime there to prepare that he appreciated their efforts.

“I want to thank the people here in Washington who are working with the folks out in the field to do everything they possibly can to prepare for this second big storm that’s coming,” he said.