By two days.

President Bush will cut short his vacation to return to Washington on Wednesday, two days earlier than planned, to help monitor federal efforts to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, the White House said Tuesday.

''We have got a lot of work to do,'' Bush said, referring to the damage wrought by the hurricane along Gulf Coast areas.

The president had been scheduled to return to the nation's capital on Friday, after spending more than four weeks operating from his ranch in Central Texas. But after receiving a briefing early Tuesday on the devastation Katrina unleashed, the president decided that he needed to be in Washington to personally oversee the federal effort, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

He's going to 'oversee' the federal effort? I thought phones and faxes made such things redundant. After all, he doesn't seem to think it necessary to stay in Washington to "personally oversee" this war he started in Iraq, does he?