President Bush visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center today. He held babies, laughed with vets and handed out Purple Hearts. Then he got down to business. Though the scandal over poor conditions and red tape at Walter Reed no longer leads the headlines, Bush assured the wounded at Walter Reed that he hadn’t forgotten them.

“The system failed you and it failed our troops, and we’re going to fix it,” he said. “I’ve taken important steps to achieve the objective.”

One of the first steps is bringing on Brig. Gen. Michael S. Tucker as the new deputy commanding general of Walter Reed. Bush noted that Tucker has a reputation as a “bureaucracy buster.”

From there, the steps follow a less linear path. Bush said he has formed three “working groups” to “address problems that may exist or may arise” at Walter Reed. Group one is a Pentagon panel that has been created to “examine the conditions at Walter Reed and Bethesda.” Group two is led by Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, with the goal of identifying “potential gaps in the services our wounded troops receive as they return from the battlefield.” Group three is “a bipartisan presidential commission” chaired by Bob Dole and Donna Shalala, which “will conduct a comprehensive review of the entire system for providing physical and emotional care to service men and women injured in this war.”

But wait, there’s more. According to the Air Force Times, both the Army and the Navy have groups looking into the treatment of wounded veterans.

At least five different panels. Five different reports. One surefire plan to bust the bureaucracy.

Republican and Democratic presidential candidates spoke very different languages when they addressed the International Association of Fire Fighters annual meeting in Washington Wednesday.

Democrats — specifically John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Hillary Clinton — made promises about healthcare, pensions and increased funding for first responders, but they hammered home one thing above all: support for organized labor.

Edwards, himself famously the son of a millworker, was the most enthusiastic, proclaiming that “as long as I am alive and breathing I will walk picket lines with you and I will help you organize and I will stand with you because I believe in you!” Edwards also challenged the firefighters to assess carefully each candidate’s commitment to labor rights: “When they’re not talking to you, do they talk about organized labor? When they’re not talking to you, do they use the word ‘union’ and do they use it proudly?”

The International Association of Fire Fighters is most definitely a boys club, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that of the 12 presidential hopefuls who addressed the union’s annual meeting today in hope of scoring an endorsement, it was the one woman in the bunch who got the sea of crew cuts and cargo pants all riled up.

Hillary Clinton, who spoke fifth, stepped onto the stage in the ballroom of Washington’s Capitol Hill Hyatt to thunderous applause then took the opportunity to play a role she isn’t exactly known for: coquette.

“Thanks for last night,” said Clinton, coyly referring to a reception the evening before. The remark elicited hoots and hollers and whistles and, later on, even a hearty “You go, girl!” “It’s an honor and a pleasure to be here this morning,” the senator said with a smile. “But it was a lot of fun to be here last night.”

Bill would have been proud.

As he begins his first major cross-country fundraising blitz, Rudy Giuliani isn’t stumping about national security or the war on terror — issues long considered his strong suits. Instead he’s showing off his softer side.

The hard-nosed former U.S. attorney, known for cracking down on organized crime and scooting the homeless from the streets of Manhattan as mayor, told members of the conservative Hoover think tank in Washington today that he made the switch from Democrat to Independent to Republican because “we care about the poor more.”