Larry said:

>Kennedy didn't announce his plans for the moon until he was in office.
>No other president has talked much about space either, not even during
>a campaign. It just isn't seen as much of an issue outside of the fringes.

We are in the middle of a Presidental reelection. With a high publicity event like MER landing on Mars, Bush really had no choice but to produce some
sort of response. If Bush simply ignored MER then that would have been
seen (correctly) as showing him indifferent to the Space Program. By
uttering a few platitudes at NASA Headquarters and doing nothing more,
Bush has immunized himself (for the short term) against the criticism that
he doesn't give a damn about Space Exploration.

Gary