That’s what CNN’s Anderson Cooper seems to be insinuating here in covering the news that Gov. Ed Rendell flew into Haiti to rescue dozens of orphans:

Gov. Ed Rendell, U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa., and others were on a plane that airlifted 53 orphans from Haiti to Pittsburgh Tuesday. That feat was mentioned on CNN late Monday night, when anchor Anderson Cooper raised the question why a “Democratic governor” could accomplish the evacuation of healthy children to the U.S. when so many injured and dying people were suffering in Port-Au-Prince.
“Again, I just don’t understand that decision, and allowing Democratic governor of a state to fly out a group of orphans who weren’t severely injured but, you know, who God knows deserved to go to the United States and be united with parents,” Cooper said.
It might have been a legitimate question, especially considering the suffering anyone on the ground in Haiti is witnessing. CNN health anchor Sanjay Gupte, a neurosurgeon, was pressed into brain surgery on a woman whose scalp had been pierced by debris. There were questions about why supplies and medical treatment were slow in coming.
But is there an equation that says as long as the majority of earthquake victims are suffering terribly, that U.S. officials should not pull strings and streamline the process of rescuing any number of people, especially healthy, small children who had been relatively unhurt by the quake?
The Pittsburgh-area sisters, Jamie and Ali McMurtrie, who run the orphanage and were featured here in this story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, took to a stranger’s Blackberry and started using Twitter and Facebook asking for help to evacuate the children. In fact, one of them made a plea for “someone important” to help make it happen.
“If u no anyone important who can give refugee status to all the Bresma U.S. kids. We truly cant keep babys alive, water contaminated. This is our only hope.” They wrote.
Former U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, who is said to be considering a run against Altimire, the Blue Dog Democrat, said she was not informed about the plane’s departure.
“I had little prior knowledge of the attempted air rescue mission that departed from Pittsburgh today, though I have since been advised that some of the resources aboard the flight were collected through the efforts of myself and others,” Buchanan said in a statement.
The final arrangements for the flight were done by the U.S. State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and the military, according to Rendell’s spokesman, Gary Tuma.

I’m not sure this is as much a photo-op as much as it is an example of what can be done when there’s someone around to cut the bureaucratic red-tape.