Bush in Blacksburg on Tuesday. (AP)

Washington, April 18 (AP): Disaster has been both the making and the undoing of President George W. Bush.

Bush’s bearing after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, — tough yet empathetic — felt right to the public. He rode that support to a second term, despite questions about the economy and the war in Iraq.

He was far less sure-footed when Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. He stumbled through his initial appearances in the disaster zone, leaving the impression of a President who was distant from the immense suffering. His presidency — like the region — has never quite recovered from its faltering early reaction.

When tragedy strikes, Presidents are expected to be national consolers — figures who affirm the grief even as they chart a path out of it. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t.

Bush’s father, in the middle of what became his losing re-election campaign in 1992, was slammed for his administration’s lacklustre response to Hurricane Andrew. By contrast, Bill Clinton rebuilt his embattled presidency partially on the strength of his commanding reaction to the Oklahoma city bombings.

The current President Bush has had plenty of experience with disaster. When the space shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry on February 1, 2003, raining debris over Texas and Louisiana and killing its seven-member crew, Bush offered comfort to families by phone and fought tears on television.

In 2004, Florida was hit by four hurricanes, prompting a President seeking re-election to pay five storm-focused visits to that politically crucial state.

Periodically since he launched the Iraq war in 2003, Bush has held emotional private meetings with relatives of US soldiers lost in battle.

Yesterday, Bush was called again to comforter-in-chief duty. The President’s remarks were fatherly — more fellow church member and citizen than the galvanising national leader who spoke in Washington’s National Cathedral three days after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Then, in soaring terms, he pronounced it only “the middle hour of our grief” but one that had already produced resolve.