Bush has brief brush with Texas tornado

CRAWFORD, Texas — President Bush spent part of Friday cutting down cedar on his ranch, indulging his inner-Reagan, much as the former president cleared brush from his own California ranch.

In the morning, Bush received his daily intelligence briefing.

Another routine day at the Western White House?

Not precisely.

In the afternoon, with prairie winds blowing and the sky a mysterious gray, the president and first lady Laura Bush were obliged to scoop up their two Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, and hurry in an armored car toward a tornado shelter on their Prairie Chapel Ranch.

The storms swirling about Central Texas on Friday — a tornado touched down north of Waco, 30 miles from Crawford and another was seen west of the president's ranch — formed an apt metaphor for the president at the end of a tumultuous year.

He was at the midpoint of a weeklong vacation that normally revolves around ranch chores. But this has been a different and strange holiday in which Bush has been unable to leave behind reminders of the problems he faces.

The intelligence briefing Friday included an update on the imminent execution of Saddam Hussein.

On Thursday, Bush met with his senior national-security advisers to work on a new strategy for Iraq.

There were also details to work out on his role in former President Ford's funeral and memorial services.

And outside the property, as usual, were anti-war demonstrators.

The vacation began Christmas weekend at Camp David, Md. But soon after Bush arrived at the Texas ranch, the cable-news channels became a video collage of past U.S. turmoil and current Iraqi mayhem. With the death of Ford, the Watergate years and the end of the Vietnam War were once again playing out.

By Friday, screens were alternating between a presidential farewell in California and repeated displays of the disheveled Saddam's capture three years ago.

Late on his first night in Crawford, Bush was told of Ford's death. It took roughly an hour for him to reach Betty Ford on the telephone.

By the next morning, he was speaking before television cameras, offering his condolences to the Ford family and paying respects to the former president as "a man of complete integrity who led our country with common sense and kind instincts."

Some of Ford's friends and former staff members complained the administration was slow in declaring a national day of mourning. White House officials said such complaints did not take into consideration the need to wait until the date of the funeral had been officially announced.

They also took pains to present their response to Ford's death as equivalent to their response to the June 2004 death of former President Reagan. This was a sensitive point after The Washington Post on Thursday published Ford's sharp criticism of Bush's Iraq policy, made in an interview in July 2004 and held for publication until after Ford's death.

And, having begun his vacation with word of Ford's death, the president is ending it several hours earlier than planned, heading back to Washington on Monday to participate in the public viewing of the former president at the Capitol. On Tuesday, he is scheduled to speak at the funeral at the Washington National Cathedral.

As for the tornado shelter, it went unused Friday.

The Bushes and the dogs sat in the car for a period that White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said "wasn't terribly long." After the threat passed, they headed back to the ranch house to continue their vacation, such as it was.