CRAWFORD, Texas – President Bush didn’t take his responsibility to vote in the Texas Republican primary on Tuesday lightly. He took a nearly 1,500-mile trip from Washington to vote in person.White House press secretary Scott McClellan wouldn’t say whether Bush had to make the trip because he wanted to vote in person or, as some suspect, because aides forgot to get him an absentee ballot.
But the trip put the president closer to the Gulf Coast, where he planned to get a look at rebuilding in New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss., on Wednesday in his 10th trip to the region since Hurricane Katrina hit.
“It happens to work out well to go ahead and vote in person,” McClellan told reporters.
The president and Mrs. Bush voted Tuesday afternoon at a polling station set up at the volunteer fire department in Crawford. The election includes a contested congressional seat in Bush’s district.
“It’s always good to come home to vote,” Bush said after casting his ballot. “And I urge all people to vote when given the chance.”
The Bushes then went to their nearby ranch to spend the night.
Bush planned to fly early Wednesday to New Orleans, where questions have recently been raised about whether residents who have returned to the city will be protected if another storm hits this year.
Two teams of independent experts have said the Army Corps of Engineers has been taking shortcuts to rebuild the levees quickly and using substandard materials that could leave large sections of the system substantially weaker than before the hurricane.
The Army Corps strongly denies the allegations. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, head of the Army Corps, told Bush in a private briefing Monday that the Corps is on track to meet the president’s goal of restoring the levees to pre-Katrina conditions by the start of the hurricane season.
But he acknowledged that the levees will not be able to protect low-lying areas if there is another Katrina-like storm this year. He said he is confident that there would not be the catastrophic impact that the city experienced with Katrina, though.
McClellan said improvements to make the levees stronger will be made over the next two to three years. He downplayed Strock’s admission that there would still be flooding.
“Let’s keep in mind, when you have hurricanes, I don’t know of instances when there is not flooding,” McClellan said. “So I think that is stating something that could be fairly obvious.