{"id":7692,"date":"2006-06-15T11:18:23","date_gmt":"2006-06-15T15:18:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7692"},"modified":"2006-06-15T11:18:23","modified_gmt":"2006-06-15T15:18:23","slug":"bush-sees-movie-changes-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-sees-movie-changes-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush sees movie, changes policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was surprised and delighted to see that Bush will designate a 1,400-mile island chain northwest of [tag]Hawaii[\/tag] as a [tag]national monument[\/tag]<\/a> today. It will, apparently, be the largest protected [tag]marine reserve[\/tag] in the world.<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, up until fairly recently, the president held the opposite position. While Clinton had declared a coral reef ecosystem reserve in the area, [tag]Bush[\/tag] considered a plan to remove some environmental protections. What caused the flip-flop? A [tag]PBS[\/tag] film<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A turning point came in April, when Bush sat through a 65-minute private White House screening of a PBS [tag]documentary[\/tag] that unveiled the beauty of — and perils facing — the archipelago’s aquamarine waters and its nesting seabirds, sea turtles and sleepy-eyed monk seals, all threatened by extinction.<\/p>\n

The film seemed to catch Bush’s imagination, according to senior officials and others in attendance. The president popped up from his front-row seat after the screening; congratulated filmmaker Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late underwater explorer Jacques [tag]Cousteau[\/tag]; and urged the [tag]White House[\/tag] staff to get moving on protecting these waters.<\/p>\n

“He was enthusiastic,” Cousteau said. “The show had a major impact on him, the way my father’s shows had on so many people. I think he really made a discovery — a connection between the quality of our lives and the oceans.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So that’s<\/i> what it takes to get through to Bush. He doesn’t respond to government reports or policy briefings; he reacts well to information he learns from TV<\/i>.<\/p>\n

This isn’t the first time. Let’s not forget that the seriousness of the Hurricane [tag]Katrina[\/tag] crisis didn’t begin to “sink in” for Bush until Dan Bartlett put together an easy-to-understand video montage for him on a DVD<\/a>, a few days after the levees broke.<\/p>\n

Of course, if that’s all it takes, I suspect a certain former Vice President might be willing to screen a certain movie<\/a> for Bush….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was surprised and delighted to see that Bush will designate a 1,400-mile island chain northwest of [tag]Hawaii[\/tag] as a [tag]national monument[\/tag] today. It will, apparently, be the largest protected [tag]marine reserve[\/tag] in the world. Oddly enough, up until fairly recently, the president held the opposite position. While Clinton had declared a coral reef ecosystem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}