The day Bush acted every inch a president

Like any historical anniversary, we revisit the events of Sept. 11, 2001, with new perspective. We like to organize the past, and the more it is past, the more we know.

Twenty years after the terrorist attacks, the biggest beneficiary of hindsight is George W. Bush. The smirking commander-in-chief who led the country into Afghanistan and Iraq and mishandled Hurricane Katrina was considered a failure when he left office in 2009.

And he still might be. There is much in his record to criticize — especially the invasion of Iraq — for ineptitude, arrogance and presumption.

But not his performance as president on

Sept. 11. In a climate of high anxiety, as terrorists were flying airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and targeting the White House or the Capitol, George Bush was calm and resolute. America needed a president in its hour of peril and he acted like one.

Bush was sitting in an elementary school classroom in Florida when an aide quietly approached him and whispered the shocking news.

He could have leapt up and left the room, but he remained in place, refusing to panic. Bush says he didn't want to alarm the children, and the country.

He had to assess the danger. Who was responsible? Was it a threat to the government itself? Were they after him, personally?

As he told 9-11: Inside the President's War Room, a new BBC documentary, the first airplane that hit the towers was an accident, the second was an attack, the third, an act of war.

On that day, Bush had been president less than eight months. His experience in government was two terms as governor of Texas. He'd won a disputed election with 500,000 fewer votes than Al Gore. “Dubya” was seen as light, folksy and incurious.

Nothing can prepare a commander-in-chief for this kind of calamity, be it Abraham Lincoln facing the defeat of the union army at Bull Run or FDR dealing with Pearl Harbor. Bush rose to the occasion.

Hysteria seized the executive branch. Having failed to see the attacks coming — a massive intelligence failure — the national security state immediately began to overcompensate.

With no evidence at all, it presumed Bush was a target. This may — or may not — have been an abundance of caution, and in the hothouse of threat and conspiracy, it was unsurprising.

So the Secret Service thought he was safest on Air Force One. On a day in motion, he was in the air for hours before landing at a military base in Nebraska.

There he got into a minivan — “the leader of the free world in a minivan!” one travelling journalist recalled incredulously — which careered across the base to a bunker. Bush told the driver to slow down, noting wryly that he felt more in danger in the runaway vehicle than anywhere else that fearful day.

Earlier the Secret Service reported a threat against “Angel,” the code word for Air Force One. Fearing an assassin on board, armed agents assembled outside his stateroom. It turned out there was no threat; “Angel” was used erroneously when the threat was relayed.

Bush insisted on returning to Washington. His aides resisted. He wasn't running away; he wanted to be seen in command. Addressing the nation that evening, he was reassuring.

In the days after, he consoled the bereaved, comforted the firefighters at Ground Zero and denounced anti-muslim prejudice. He understood the moral authority of his office.

History will judge George W. Bush for what he should have known before the attack. It will judge him for how he responded after the attack.

And it will judge him in the context of his successors, especially Donald Trump, who makes Bush look like Pericles. Historically, you might say, Trump was the best thing to happen to Bush. But even without him, Americans are reliably sentimental about their former presidents, even the weak ones.

But give Bush his due. On Sept. 11, when the country craved leadership, empathy and moderation, he was every inch a president.