Compare and contrast

Bush has been taking heat from John Kerry, Michael Moore and others for his actions during the first seven minutes after he was notified that the first plane had hit the World Trade Center. Kerry has said:

"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it," Kerry told the Unity conference of minority journalists in response to a question about what he would done.

However, let's contrast this with what Kerry actually did during that time. The following is an excerpt from the transcript of Kerry and his wife's interview with Larry King:

KING: Where were you on 9/11?

HEINZ KERRY: You know, it's very interesting. I landed at National Airport less than 12 hours before, coming from Pennsylvania, where I was doing a prescription drugs thing -- meeting. And I came in from Pittsburgh, landed at National, and that's the last time I landed at National for quite a while.

KING: How'd you hear about it?

HEINZ KERRY: I was at home in Washington. I had just come in and I got a call...

KERRY: I think I called.

HEINZ KERRY: And they said, look at the TV. I looked at the TV and I couldn't believe it.

KING: Where were you?

KERRY: I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting -- we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.

I got these links from this post at Blaster's Blog, the link to which I got from this post at Cold Fury. In his post, Blaster sums up with:

Time between second plane hitting WTC and Pentagon = time spent not thinking = 40 minutes.

He then follows up with this post where he writes:

Let's put that in perspective.

In the 40 minutes between the second plane striking the WTC and the plane striking the Pentagon, John Kerry sat, unable to think.

In those same 40 minutes, President Bush spoke to the Vice President, the director of the FBI, the National Security Advisor, and the governor of New York; addressed the nation; and rushed to Air Force One.

And he read a book.

Now I'm not saying that a Senator is going to do the same things as a President under these circumstances. However, the fact that Kerry did absolutely nothing during that time, by his own admission, at least has to make you wonder.