Smile, disaster victims

...it's the Apperance of Concern Show.

Stepping through rubble and generously offering hugs, President Bush tried Wednesday to lift the spirits of a community in disbelief after last week's killer tornado destroyed nearly all of this town of 1,600.

The president said he came to Kansas to tour the wreckage in the hopes that he could "touch somebody's soul by representing the country."

At one point, Bush stopped at a tractor dealership, the building gutted and its plows mangled. It had been a major employer in town, and the president freely dished out hugs.

The president ambled down the road to a house with no roof, almost slipping as he picked his way across a chunk of metal on the lawn. He briefly grabbed a chain saw, ripping it into action for the cameras and other media that accompanied him.

"How are you all?" Bush asked as he moved among residents.

The president spent about 20 minutes at a second house, where he posed for photos and listened to survivors. It was there that he addressed a clump of reporters for his only public words of the day. For his backdrop, a yellow crane in the home's driveway suspended an American flag while the trees in the front lawn had metal and plastic debris wedged into what remained of their branches.

Like New Orleans, Kansas gets a national guardsman shortage and photo-ops.

Good luck, Greensburg. It probably won't be long before you, too, aren't mentioned in the State of the Union address and are considered by the press too rude a topic to raise to a person who was decent enough to offer invitations to dinner with the queen.

By the way, Bush's five-day delay in getting to Greensburg would be galling if his presence actaully made a shit of difference.