Elisabeth Bumiller reports in the
that Senator McCain has not only described the Administration’s reponse to Katrina a ‘disgraceful,’ but that he also believed that the President was directly responsible.
Asked at an outdoor news conference if he traced the failure of leadership straight to the top, Mr. McCain, who has vowed to campaign with President Bush, said, emphatically, “yes.”
Before his news conference, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, spent about half an hour on a walking tour of rubble and still-dilapidated houses in the Lower Ninth Ward, all recorded by two packed, slow-moving flatbed trucks of reporters and camera crews who rumbled just ahead of the candidate and his wife, Cindy.
At least one resident was disturbed by all the media attention, particularly by the lack of seats for local residents at Mr. McCain’s 20-minute news conference. “We need to have an opportunity to have a meaningful dialogue,” said Mary Fontenot, who is with All Congregations Together, a church group working to rebuilding New Orleans. “Twenty minutes out on the lawn does not suffice, with a designated seating for traveling journalists.”
Elisabeth Bumiller, “McCain Criticizes Katrina Response as ‘Disgraceful’ “- The New York Times