THAT OTHER TIME GEORGE W. BUSH SUGGESTED THAT 9/11 WAS NO BIG WHOOP

Kathleen Parker has just published a column in The Washington Post about how wonderful the Bushes are, which ought to disqualify her from writing about Jeb for the remainder of his political career, but won't. BooMan flags this passage from the column:

I remember a comment George W. Bush made to me during a one-on-one, in-flight interview. He said the toughest moment of his life wasn’t what to do after 9/11 but seeing his father -- “this fine, fine man” -- defeated by Clinton. I thought for a moment he might cry, but of course he wouldn’t.

BooMan is understandably appalled:

What Kathleen is fondly recalling here is actually a moment that should have brought some clarifying terror. Here was the president of the United States freely admitting that watching his father lose the presidency to Bill Clinton was a more formative event for him than watching the Twin Towers collapse.

But this shouldn't be surprising. In his 2010 memoir, Decision Points, Bush identified "the worst moment of my presidency" -- not 9/11, but being called a racist by a black entertainer.

As Mehdi Hasan wrote at the time in The New Statesman:

This morning's papers lead with extracts, snippets and lines from Bush's new memoir, Decision Points....

One bit from the extracts of the book that stands out to me, and perhaps sums up both the ridiculous and odious nature of George Bush and his presidency, is the section on Hurricane Katrina and the fallout from it. The ex-president describes how upset and angry he was to hear, at the time, how the rapper Kanye West had told television viewers: "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

From the Guardian:

"Five years later, I can barely write these words without feeling disgusted. I am deeply insulted by the suggestion that we allowed American citizens to suffer because they were black ... The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. I was raised to believe that racism was one of the greatest evils in society," Bush writes. "I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was a racist, because of the response to Katrina, represented an all-time low. I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today."

So the worst moment of his presidency was when he was personally insulted. And the worst moment of his life was when his father lost an election. Three thousand dead in a massive terrorist attack? Get in line, 9/11 -- that wasn't his worst day. That wasn't even the worst day of his presidency.

Kanye wasn't exactly right: The truth is, George W. Bush doesn't care about non-Bush people.