The morning of January 15th 2005, did not begin as many thought it would. The news conference by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, expected to be revelatory, was confusedly pedantic and unfocused. A prayer breakfast with Paul Wolfowitz likewise did not yield the admissions that most had understood the administration to be ready to provide. Vice President Cheney’s whereabouts were unknown. Early commentary ran along the lines of “they still don’t get it.” But the uncertainties of those first few hours will be forgotten when history books tell the tale of that day, a day brought into high relief by the man who was still then acting-President of the United States, George Bush.
The President attended an extraordinary closed-door joint session of the Congress, and emerged at 10:50 a.m., just over an hour after arriving. The Secret Service used the Capitol’s underground tram to bring Bush to the Russell Senate Office Building, where a limousine waited. A small convoy drove slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue towards the White House, but stopped near the Old Post Office Building. The motorcade stayed unmoving for over ten minutes and a crowd began to gather. Though major media waited near the Capitol believing that the President would be speaking in the Capitol Rotunda, the motorcade was discovered by a camera crew from local station WETA and at 11:05 they began broadcasting live. Federal employees who heard of the event left their desks and came down to Pennsylvania Avenue. Tourists and ordinary D.C. residents joined the crowds. At 11:22 President Bush stepped out of his car. Secret Service agents formed a nervous phalanx around him.
There were a few catcalls. The president stood motionless. Someone threw a cup of coffee that exploded like a water balloon splashing the President’s trousers. He was wearing one of his trademark dark blue suits and a wide red tie. His gaze was cast down and he did not react or look up when the coffee cup landed. Someone in the crowd shouts, “No, don’t.” and a scuffling off to the side will later be found to be two bystanders wrestling with the man who threw the cup. There is general hubbub, murmured speculation. Then the President began to walk slowly towards the White House, straight down the center of the street. Six Secret Service agents encircle him, so closely they nearly obscure him from view, but he pushes them back and they expand the ring.
No one who watched that day, or has seen the tapes will forget the next dramatic moment. Eyes down, the President stops, sways, then kneels and finally lays down flat on the pavement, his arms stretched in the direction of the as yet unseen White House, his forehead on the ground. After a moment, he rises and takes a few steps forward, then repeats the prostration, first kneeling, then stretching himself flat, forehead to the ground. The crowd now lines both sides of the street. There is hushed silence.
It is six-hundred and fifteen yards from the Old Post Office Building to the U.S. Treasury, whose anti-terrorist barriers block direct access to the White House. The President is six-foot, two-inches tall. It will take him three hundred and twelve prostrations to reach the Treasury, and another ninety-two to skirt it and come the to gates of the White House itself. By Thirteenth Street a dark stain is seen on his right knee; by Fourteenth the pants are torn at both knees and scraped and bloody flesh can be seen. At Fifteenth Street he removes his tie and his shoes. He lays them on the ground and no one notices what becomes of them. Shortly after, Bush removes his suit jacket and socks. The jacket is taken by Monroe Henderson, an unemployed bus driver from Silver Springs Maryland. The socks are retrieved by a Secret Service agent. Metro police have arrived, but there is little for them to do. The crowds that line the street do not push forward. They stand in astonishment, many weeping openly.
The President arrives at the gates of the White House after fifty-four minutes of this excruciating, and apparently unrehearsed atonement. There is blood on both his knees and the palm of his left hand. The gates of the White House open, but he shakes his head slightly and walks past them. He stops on the sidewalk, eyes till downcast, as if waiting for something. A moment later Laura Bush walks quickly, sometimes almost breaking into a run, down the drive of the White House and stands directly in front of her husband, hands on his shoulders. There is a whispered conversation between them. Mrs. Bush nods and looks up, looks around until she sees the reporter from WETA. The camera follows her as she takes the microphone from the reporter and faces the lens. Her face is seen by millions of Americans. She says, “My husband asks me to say this: ‘Please forgive me.’” She fights to keep her composure. “He doesn’t ask for understanding, only your forgiveness.” Eventually the limousine will take them away.
George Bush standing barefoot in front of the White House, in torn trousers, with bloodied knees and a smudge of street soot on his forehead, sweat and dirt plastering his once-starched shirt to his chest. This is the image that America remembers during the months of his self-imposed seclusion.
Wolfowitz,
Rove and Cheney never do recant, but nearly every other
government and party official does. Over the next weeks a parade of
cabinet
officers, G.O.P chairmen, generals and department heads will come
before the
American people and confess every lie, fraud and deceit, in precise
detail,
each and every one.