Mr. Big Government

About That Backdrop

From Bush's lonely walk to the podium, to the cathedral over his shoulder lit up like Disneyland, to his wooden delivery before an audience of none, there was something particularly off key about all the White House stagecraft imported into the ghostly center of a still half-drowned town.

And it was, indeed, literally imported. The New York Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, acting as pool reporter, informed colleagues yesterday that all the lights and generators needed to create the desired effect were flown in by the White House.

Reporters were not allowed out of their vans while the president spoke, but they demanded a quick tour of the area beforehand.

"Bobby DeServi and Scott Sforza were on hand as we drove up about 8 p.m. or so EDT handling last-minute details of the stagecraft," Bumiller wrote. DeServi is the White House's chief lighting designer; Sforza is in charge of visuals.

"Bush will be lit with warm tungsten lighting, but the statue [of Andrew Jackson] and cathedral will be illuminated with much brighter, brighter lights . . . like the candlepower that DeServi and Sforza used on Sept. 11, 2002, to light up the Statue of Liberty for Bush's speech in New York Harbor," she wrote.

"Here's a quote from DeServi on the lit-up cathedral: 'Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud.' "

TV critic Joanna Weiss writes in the Boston Globe: "Last night, he stood in New Orleans's Jackson Square, wearing blue shirtsleeves that blended almost perfectly into the blue-lit statue and cathedral behind him. His head looked disembodied. His mouth struggled to maintain a frown.

"The White House is scrambling, and the images prove it. . . .

"Appearing in New Orleans was surely meant as a gesture of confidence -- especially since Bush spoke from the relatively unscathed heart of the French Quarter, as opposed to one of the storm-ravaged neighborhoods we've seen so much. But the eerie stillness around him spoke volumes."

TV critic Paul Brownfield writes for the Los Angeles Times: "The set piece was in sharp contrast to the backdrop that TV reporters and anchors have been using in the last few weeks, their dispatches filed from the edge of floodwaters and ruined homes, from shelters where lives had been turned upside down. . . .

"So the spooky placidity of Jackson Square, on what conveyed an otherwise peaceful evening in New Orleans, seemed an oddly appropriate choice for a president who throughout this crisis has been unable to halt the image of a leader who has been neither here nor there. . . .

"Bush, you thought, could have given this speech from the Oval Office, but he came to stake his own version of being there. And he chose the only kind of postcard left on the racks -- the impossibly serene one."