Not since he sat in a Florida classroom as the World Trade Center burned a thousand miles away has President Bush faced a test quite like the one he returned to Washington to confront this afternoon.We all need to hope for Bush to succeed in this. But then we all need to hope for him to succeed in Iraq. As with Iraq, there will be hyenas howling at every mistake, who will drive the rest of us crazy by seeming as though they hate Bush so much that they love when things go badly. I realize they can't really think that way — can they? — but they do drive us crazy by seeming like they do.
After initially stumbling through that disorienting day almost exactly four years ago, Mr. Bush entered what many of his aides believe were the finest hours of his presidency. But unlike 2001, when Mr. Bush was freshly elected and there was little question that the response would include a military strike, Mr. Bush confronts this disaster with his political capital depleted by the war in Iraq....
"The great thing about this president is that he doesn't try to use tragedy to gain immediate attention for himself," said Bob Martinez, a former governor of Florida who has endured his share of hurricanes and other disasters. "He talks to those with knowledge, and then he acts."
But now, he said, "there needs to be a powerful message to the country to energize the help," a message Mr. Bush plans to amplify, his aides say, when he visits the stricken areas, probably Friday or Saturday. Mr. Martinez noted that "the risk is that there is sometimes a big disconnect between you when you speak and when bottles of water end up in people's hands."
That may be a more complicated problem in this disaster, veterans of such operations warn, than it was after 9/11. Mr. Allbaugh noted that for all the horror of that day, the immediate damage was confined to "16 acres in New York" and part of the Pentagon, and "here you have hundreds of thousands of square miles" of misery. And the problems in the region will vary tremendously, from caring for the newly homeless in New Orleans to wiped-out ports along the coast.
Here's the link to make a donation to the American Red Cross.
UPDATE: And, no, I didn't misspell "mistake" intentionally to see if I could make hyenas howl as an object lesson. I just tried to change "misstep" to "mistake" at the last minute. Sorry for the distraction!
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The howling has already begun! How many snide "Bush's long vacation ended" references have we heard already? Well, they're only hurting themselves, as my mother used to day.
There was just a conversation among a couple of my co-workers that really, stuff like this happens all over the world all the time, and the U.S. doesn't care. All we care about is the gas prices. And that the "genius" in the White House will only make things worse.
Considering U.S. donations to tsunami relief--among other recent and ongoing events around the world in which the U.S. has played a critical and positive role--I can't account for it, and it's really depressing.
"If you gave equal time to the worst of the right, I would have more faith in your claimed centrism."
gee when did you start reading this blog, last week?
Has anyone ever seen the amount of commo equipment that the President takes on "vacation?" Other than being able to see some scenery other than the Washington Monument and not having to greet the Lower Oklahoma Dairy Maid Society and such every 10 minutes, it's a classic working vacation. Okay, so he doesn't have to deal much with congresscritters either - that would be a real vacation, I'm sure.
The reality is there isn't a heck of a lot more he can do in DC that he can't do in Crawford, TX... besides have the calls he's making be local.
How many other people end up on TV that much during their vacations, after all?
Now if Pres. Bush left town with nothing but his Secret Service detachment, gave VP Cheney the football and told him, "You're in charge, see you in a month..."
That would be a vacation.
Eric, I'm sure Bush was still checking his email in Crawford. :)
There are a number of Democratic talking points voiced above which could use some perspective:
Stephen says lowering taxes primarily on the rich has created big deficits and forced Bush to fight on the cheap. Not quite so. Most economists not of the Krugman persuasion believe the tax cuts stimulated the economy with a resulting net gain in tax revenues. This helped cut not raise the deficit.
Eric implies that Bush took a longer vacation than most CEOs. This is misleading. The President of the US is never really on vacation what with Air Force One and the Little White House facilities and everyone coming to him in Texas instead of in Washington. Since FDR, all presidents have taken a large portion of the summer out of Washington. Through depression, WW II, Korea, Vietnam and the Cold War.
Bush has done no more and no less.
Reading history would better inform. As Casey Stengle used to say, "you can look it up".
Jim Rhoads (vnjagvet)
There are plenty of middle of the road and right wing persons who questioned the decision to invade Iraq
There were also hardline leftists who were so pro-war that they switched sides over it. Like me.
lowering taxes primarily on the rich
Typing this sort of thing calls your credibility into question. Poor people got quite a tax cut.
Most economists not of the Krugman persuasion believe the tax cuts stimulated the economy with a resulting net gain in tax revenues. This helped cut not raise the deficit.
Exactly.
"gee when did you start reading this blog, last week?"
Well, he hasn't been reading carefully enough to spell my name right...
Anyway, I don't try to be for or against either side. I just call them as I see them.
Let me note, that I voted for Gore in 2000 and had no love for Bush at all until 9/11. At that point, he had things he needed to do, and supporting him was an instinctive response — at least in anyone who isn't hardcore partisan (or anti-American). The current disaster also should cause ordinary people to support the President. Those who think it's a good idea to point to every shortcoming and howl are going to alienate ordinary people.
And I'm not saying we shouldn't criticize the government. We should. But there are good ways to do it and bad. I have a lot of problems with the lack of adequate planning to help poor people in New Orleans.
"it's not like Bush misled/lied about the hurricane.'
Oh, Eric, I'm sure he did. He's a big fat lying liar. Keep looking! And give him time.
Stephen Bundy... First of all you need to read Anne Althaus' blog and know she is mostly centrist (as much as that's possible).
Highlighting the worst of the right and left. Here's the roll call of the Left who make and or support looney behavior and statements: Ted Kennedy, Frank Lautenberg, Dick Durbin, John Conyers, Jimmuh Carter, Robert Byrd, Chuck Shumer, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and lets not forget the DNC, MoveON, Michael Moore, the movie stars and musicians, et al.
Now let's look at the looney Right... David Duke -- ex-KKK -- hounded out of the Republican party and avoided like the plague. Pat Robertson -- a loudmouth preacher who used to want people to touch their TV sets to be healed!! Jerry Falwell... preacher who should know better, but sued Hustler for talking about his mommy; Tom Tancredo -- congressman representing 500K folks from Colorado.
The Left's roll call of idiocy is chock full of U.S. SENATORS and CONGRESSMEN (and women too), and EX-PRESIDENT, NY TIMES Editorialists and the (ahem) "cultural elite" who regularly say, write, and approve overtly and covertly the most asinine, scurrilous, and idiotic tripe about Bush.
The Right's roll call of lunacy is filled with a backwater (relatively -- I love CO) congressman, a racist idiot no one listens to and a couple of bass-ackward preachers.
Hmmm... not the same.
OK, no "pointing to every shortcoming and howling." But I don't think it hampers the relief efforts to question (loudly, if necessary) whether deliberate Bush administration policies have left us under-prepared to deal with an emergency like this? On that list I would include a painfully overextended military that's left us with inadequate manpower and equipment. These concerns were raised over and over again well before Katrina struck, and the response from officials like Rumsfeld was rudely dismissive. I really don't think that raising these questions now isn't going to damage our current mission in the Delta.
Joseph: I don't know who should have done what prior to this disaster, but I'm interested in hearing a proper analysis of the subject (as opposed to political opportunism). More importantly, I care about what is and isn't being done NOW. I want to see the National Guard there, in strong numbers, bringing order, and rescuing people. It's been a day of hearing about rescuers threatened and turning back. No excuses. The military should be there!
Also, I don't think it's ill-timed or un-American to ask about the funding cuts made by the WHite House in the Army Corps of Engineers program to repair the levees. This is still a story in need of further reporting, but I see that Andrew Sullivan has been following it.
I'm not afraid of bullies. The fact that Michael Moore et al. can rant the way they do without getting imprisoned or a bullet in the head is a good thing. I'm tired of a moral equivlence between sides of a political debate where one side's main "guys" sound like whack-jobs while you would never hear -- and the press wouldn't let slide the likes of trent Lott, Bob Dole, Rummy, Wolfowitz, DeLay, et al. say anything near wacky.
Am I a bully? Exactly how? Am I afraid of bullies? Show me how.
Ms Althouse, you're asking if the left's epicuricacy is so strong they genuinely cheer America's mistakes and disasters? Not just the president's, but ours? I'm not fully neutral - full disclosure: somewhat libertarian, though I have some trouble convincing myself my politics are either sufficiently informed or so trenchantly expressed others need to hear about them. That said, yes. For the latinists (not a few) in your commentariat, "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem." (Occam) I look at pronouncements from the Durbins, Kennedys, Fondas, Sheehans; the simplest explanation that covers the facts is that yes, it's a Hate-America-First situation. Read through some of the commenters here, comb them. Find a positive statement, any positive statement, about the United States? I said it in a previous post; all my life I've been splitting my vote among the parties, but it's getting harder to do so.
It's not the George Galloways and Cindy Sheehans and Ward Churchhills of the world screaming the loudest about President Bush's supposed mistakes with regard to Hurricane Katrina, It's Sidney Blumenthal, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the NYTimes editorial page, the BBC News Service and countless others who should (and probably do) know better.
Blumenthal angers me more than the others though, his position in a nutshell is that during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration they studied the problem to death, and plopped down a nice fat document with dozens of expensive recommendations that the incoming administration was grossly incompetent for not immediately implementing.
No explanation as to why during the Clinton years only studies and no actions, no explanation that even had the Bush administration followed everything Blumenthal mentioned that the improvements would be in process and wouldn't have prevented this catastrophe.
Call me a right-wing nut if you must but this rational parallels the majority of the Clintonian reaction to the War on Terror (with the exception of Bill and Hillary themselves, who have also been silent regarding Katrina culpability). To summarize, they knew better, they offered recommendations that weren't heeded, but even though nothing actually changed or got done during their administration, everything is Bu$HHitler's fault cause he is an evil chimp who feasts on the blood of poverty striken children as he lights cigars with $100 bills.
And as far as global warming and the sham that was Kyoto, the US has reduced our emmissions since then while the signator countries have increased their emmissions, so which group is doing a better job in reacting to the problems of fossil fuel dependence?
It's long past time for a third (or fourth and fifth) party in this country, there needs to be a place where social libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and GWOT hawks can feel comfortable voting for candidates that match those views without compromise (I believe the correlation of those views would make up a plurality of U.S. voters which is why if Rudy Guiliani can clear the Republican primary he will trounce Hillary).
About the Hurricane Katrina disaster, we can add this to the growing list of shortcomings by the U.S. Government in response to catastrophes.
In the last 65 years...See rest here
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