Reply #31: The "hideout" thing has always bothered me.

[Old and In the Way]

This should have been a hi-profile moment for Dimson. Wouldn't this be something that his WH handlers would want to take advantage of? Especially since his polling was trending down from day 1 in office. If it was Clinton, do you think that he'd have hid out in a bunker all day? To be AWOL on the most momentous day of modern American history is just too strange. Where was the press? Odd how there has been absolutely no leaks of Bush's actions that day after he left Sarasota. Seems to me that they risked public derision of Bush for scampering down a hidey hole instead of the obvious "no-brainer" of using this as a "Presidential moment". Pretty big risk for a guy who is a complete media creation.

The only reason I can figure is that they needed to make sure all loose ends were known/understood and rescripted to fit a plausible scenario. That would take a lot of time and they would need to be totally insulated from the publics eye to accomplish it.