Is Bush a racist?(on the right)(George W. Bush)

NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 13 CRITICS of Mr. Bush may by their excesses be undermining not him, but the weight of sound thought. The most clearly vulnerable line of attack has to do with vacation time--taken as an absolute indicator of fidelity to duty. "George W. Bush, the least hardworking president in history, continued playing at his Texas ranch while his fellow citizens drowned and starved in New Orleans." This from The Week magazine in London, quoting Philippe Grangereau in Paris's Liberation. He has just discovered that the reason Rome burned was that Nero fiddled.

At a more ambitious level of criticism is Howard Jacobson in the London Independent. It was as easy for him as to look at the face of Bush on television. "No light of humanity in the eyes. No gravitas on the face."

It's true that Bush's face hasn't the melancholic cast of Abraham Lincoln's, but it was a large leap to assume from dark juxtapositions, intended irony. But Annette Levy-Willard tried it in Liberation. Her point is that television news directors undertook to expose the hypocrisy of Mr. Bush and his administration through the use of a split screen: "On one side, an administration official saying everything was fine; on the other, images of old people and the poor clinging to rooftops, dying of thirst." You can't really expect an official talking to a television reporter about the help that's on its way simultaneously to be feeding people "clinging to rooftops."

But there are serious critics who say that the basic question has to do with racial disparities. USA Today features a poll on this question. Asked whether the president "cares about black people," 67 percent of whites said yes, 79 percent of blacks said no. A broader question was put in a poll by the Washington Post, which recorded that nearly two-thirds of black respondents said that race played a part in the government's response while just over two-thirds of whites said that wasn't the case.

The beginning of wisdom in accosting that question is: Do you believe it? Do you believe that a helicopter looking for people in desperation would give preferred treatment to someone whose hands ...