How political is hurricane coverage?

5 days after Hurricane Katrina The New York Times front page was wall-to-wall Hurricane coverage.

5 days after Hurricane Helene The New York Times has moved on to January 6th. pic.twitter.com/Mh7Sdv4jl7

— Alberto E. Martinez (@albertemartinez) October 4, 2024

"The damage is so severe, we are telling drivers that unless it is an emergency, all roads in Western North Carolina should be considered closed."

Said a spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Transportation, quoted in "More Than 400 Roads Closed in North Carolina After Damage From Helene/The closures, including on two interstates, left motorists scrambling for options" (NYT).

Why isn't the hurricane damage the top story right now? That story isn't linked on the NYT home page.

I can't help feeling that the NYT is trying to protect the Biden/Harris administration from suffering political damage (like what happened to George W. Bush over Katrina).

The top of the home page is dominated by Israel's wars: "Why the World’s Biggest Powers Can’t Stop a Middle East War/The United States’ ability to influence events in the Middle East has waned, and other major nations have essentially been onlookers," "Israel Keeps Up Strikes Against Hezbollah in Lebanon/The Israeli military said it had hit dozens of Hezbollah targets, a day after deadly strikes near Beirut. Israel killed the group’s leader on Friday," "Having ignored allies and defied critics, Benjamin Netanyahu is basking in a rare triumph. Having ignored allies and defied critics, Benjamin Netanyahu is basking in a rare triumph," "Iran projected caution after Israel’s killing of Hassan Nasrallah and bombings in Beirut," "Despair, Celebration and Shock Follows News of Nasrallah’s Death in Beirut," and "A Decimated Hezbollah Is a Serious Blow to Iran." 

Six stories! Important, though, and there's a lot of depth to those stories, including very new material.

But the next set of stories is the old 2024 presidential campaign:

"And I’m here to support the great people of Louisiana. It’s been a tremendous state for me... It’s very important that I was here..."

Said President Trump, speaking in in Lake Charles, Louisiana yesterday, 2 days after it was hit by Hurricane Laura. Transcript.

Classic Trump: It’s been a tremendous state for me... It’s very important that I was here...

Here's some detail about Trump's trip, surveying the damage and interacting with people on the ground.

Trump is quite different from George W. Bush, who, after Katrina hit Louisiana, chose to view the damage from the seat of his airplane. He got blasted for looking detached and uncaring. He wrote about it in his book "Decision Points":

I’ve often reflected on what I should have done differently that day. I believe the decision not to land in New Orleans was correct. Emergency responders would have been called away from the rescue efforts, and that would have been wrong. A better option would have been to stop at the airport in Baton Rouge, the state capital. Eighty miles north of the flood zone, I could have strategized with the governor and assured Katrina victims that their country stood with them. Landing in Baton Rouge would not have saved any lives. Its benefit would have been good public relations. But public relations matter when you are president, particularly when people are hurting. When Hurricane Betsy devastated New Orleans in 1965, Lyndon Johnson flew in from Washington to visit late at night. He made his way to a shelter in the Ninth Ward by flashlight. “This is your president!” he called out when he arrived in the dark and crowded space. “I’m here to help you!” Unfortunately, I did not follow his example.

You've got to take the consequences of modesty and restraint. You may hear it lauded many years after you serve in office, when your old job is occupied by a man who's chosen not to follow your model of modesty and restraint. How does that make you feel, seeing how much those people who hated on you are hating the new guy for being the opposite of you?

"It's tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amounts of water."

President Trump tells people in the path of Florence, "Get out." And he assures people that the government is ready and will spare no expense dealing with this predicted-to-be-massive hurricane.

I'm watching to see how much of the coverage will be Trump-focused. There's social and political pressure to forefront empathy for the potential victims (and, later, the actual victims), but I'm sure many people are readying themselves to use Florence to ruin Trump. Florence should make Bush's Katrina look like an afternoon sun-shower. Right? And we've heard so much about the "blue wave" in the midterm elections. Now there is literal water, tremendously wet water. It must and it will be used against Trump and the Republicans who facilitate his depredations, but be careful, Trump haters. You must overflow and burble with compassion for the victims. They're what really matter to you. I'll be watching your political theater. I know what's coming. It will be tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amounts of water.

And I'll be watching Trump too. Get it right. Don't let Florence Katrina you. Show how to do a disaster right. Bush went from high to low because of Katrina and how his antagonists weaponized it. You can do the opposite. And who doesn't want Trump to find great success in meeting the challenge of a great natural disaster? No one will step up and say, yes, that's me, I want him to fail miserably, so we can crush him like Bush. They need to act, at least for a little while, as if they back our President. It will be interesting to see the insincere and temporary support he will get preparatory to the inevitable denouncements — the tremendously wet denouncements.

Harvey's dogs, Katrina's dogs.

We're seeing lots of people + dogs rescues. Here's a NYT article "Saving Pets Is Paramount for Many Fleeing Tropical Storm Harvey."

But there's no reminder of how different things were with Katrina in 2005. Here's an article in Buzzfeed from a few years ago, "How Hurricane Katrina Turned Pets Into People/After Katrina, animal rescuers saved thousands of New Orleans' cats and dogs — and in the process, elevated the status of pets in the eyes of the law":

Are you watching the TV news about Hurricane Harvey hitting Texas?

I haven't yet, but I'm just guessing that the newsfolk are talking about how much Hurricane Katrina hurt President George W. Bush and are hoping — and trying not to be too unseemly about it — that Harvey will screw President Trump even worse. Check it out for me, and let me know. Please give me credit if I've said it first: They're less worried about Harvey hurting Texas than they are delighted that at the prospect of Harvey hurting Trump.

Why aren't people paying more attention to the terrible flooding in Louisiana?

Do you think it's the lack of a name?

“This is a historic flooding event,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said Tuesday. “When you have a storm that is unnamed — it wasn’t a tropical storm, it wasn’t a hurricane — a lot of times people underestimate the impact that it would have....”

I don't:

The name "Katrina" got attached to what was mainly a flood, but I think the lack of attention isn't so much the lack of a name but the lack of a President people feel like attacking. But don't worry, sufferers of natural disasters, we're going to have one soon.

"Unless the rapidly disappearing wetlands are made healthy again, restoring the natural defense, New Orleans will soon lay naked against the sea...."

"So, how does one reengineer the entire Mississippi River delta—one of the largest in the world—on which New Orleans lies?"

Three international engineering and design teams have reached a startling answer: leave the mouth of the Mississippi River to die. Let the badly failing wetlands there completely wither away, becoming open water, so that the upper parts of the delta closer to the city can be saved...,

Scientists worldwide agree that the delta’s wetlands disintegrated because we humans built long levees—high, continuous ridges of earth covered by grass or rocks—along the entire length of the lower Mississippi River... [that] prevented regular floods from harming farms, industries and towns along the river’s course... [but] would have supplied the brackish marshes with massive quantities of silt and freshwater, which are necessary for their survival....

The ebola story that really gets people's attention.

Spain wants to kill a dog.

This is like the way the human suffering after Katrina was overshadowed by the plight of some dogs. Here's something David Sedaris wrote about that:

People I know, people who had never before contributed to charity, emptied their pockets when a cocker spaniel was shown standing on a rooftop after Hurricane Katrina hit, eight months later. “What choice did I have?” they asked. “That poor little thing looked into the camera and penetrated my very soul.”

The eyes of the stranded grandmother, I noted, were not half as piercing. There she was, clinging to a chimney with her bra strap showing, and all anyone did was wonder if she had a dog. “I’d hate to think there’s a Scotty in her house, maybe trapped on the first floor. What’s the number of that canine-rescue agency?

"He’s the most seductive character that we’ve seen in American politics in our lifetime. He just has this unbelievably resilient and seductive personality."

Said David Axelrod... about Bill Clinton, to Maureen Dowd, who's examining why Bill Clinton is so terribly popular these days.

Dowd also has this strange pairing of paragraphs:

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg center poll showed that Clinton was, by a long shot, the most admired president of the last quarter-century. A new YouGov poll finds that among the last eight elected presidents, Clinton is regarded as the most intelligent and W. the least.

(Clinton and W. both should have been more aggressive in catching Osama. But certainly, if Clinton had been president post-9/11, there would have been no phony invasion of Iraq, and Katrina would have elicited more empathy.)

To that parenthetical, I say:

1. What phony military invasions would Clinton have chosen as appropriate after 9/11?  (I've listed Clinton's actual military ventures below the jump.)

2. Would he bite his lip? Would he wipe away a tear?

The NYT acknowledges Obama's in trouble by reminding us that Bush was really, really bad. Remember?!!

At the website front page the teaser headline  — which is also the headline in the paper version — is:  "As Troubles Pile Up, a Crisis of Confidence for Obama." But if you click to the article, the headline becomes "Health Law Rollout’s Stumbles Draw Parallels to Bush’s Hurricane Response."

I can think of a whole bunch of non-parallels:

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

4. The Republican Bush believed he could not simply bully past the Democratic Mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic Governor of Louisiana and impose a federal solution, but the Democrat Obama and his party in Congress aggressively and voluntarily took over an area of policy that might have been left to the states.

5. The media were ready to slam Bush long and hard for everything — making big scandals out of things that, done by Obama, would have been forgotten a week later (what are the Valerie Plame-level screwups of Obama's?) — but the media have bent over backwards for years to help make Obama look good and to bury or never even uncover all of his lies and misdeeds.

6. If Bush experienced a disaster like the rollout of Obamacare, the NYT wouldn't use its front page to remind us of something Bill Clinton did that looked bad.

But let's check out the asserted parallels in that NYT article by Michael D. Shear:

The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but also raises questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administration’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.

But unlike Mr. Bush, who faced confrontational but occasionally cooperative Democrats, Mr. Obama is battling a Republican opposition that has refused to open the door to any legislative fixes to the health care law and has blocked him at virtually every turn. 

Oh, well, that's another nonparallel. Republicans oppose Obama, unlike those Democrats who sometimes helped Bush. And the NYT reinforces my point #5 (above).

But think about it this way, NYT. What if Bush and the Republicans had created the hurricane, and the Democrats adamantly believed it would be better not to have a hurricane? Would the Democrats have been "occasionally cooperative" to Republicans who smugly announced that they won the election and they've been wanting this hurricane for 100 years and canceling the hurricane was not an option?

Republicans readily made the Hurricane Katrina comparison. 

Oh? Note the wording. It doesn't say that important Republicans were bringing up Katrina on their own. I suspect that the journalist, Shear, asked various Republicans to talk about Bush and Katrina and some of them did.

“The echoes to the fall of 2005 are really eerie,” said Peter D. Feaver, a top national security official in Mr. Bush’s second term. “Katrina, which is shorthand for bungled administration policy, matches to the rollout of the website.” 

Okay, so Shear got Feaver to put a name on the assertion that Republicans made the comparison. No other Republican is named. Shear moves on to Obama's "top aides" and tells us — here's my point #5 again —  that they stressed how unlike Katrina it is, since "Mr. Obama is struggling to extend health care to millions of people who do not have it. Those are very different issues."

I agree. The health care screwup isn't a natural disaster. Obama and the Democrats made their own disaster, stepping up to do something they should have known they weren't going to be able to do well, and they lied about what they were doing to get it passed.

And yet they meant well. They wanted to help people. Unlike Bush, who — what? — asked for that hurricane?

ADDED: My point #4, above, draws from this passage in Bush's "Decision Points" (previously blogged here):

If I invoked the Insurrection Act against [Governor Blanco's] wishes, the world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city. That left me in a tough position. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states' rights tensions, could unleash holy hell.

And the NYT would have framed it that way (which is my point #5).

"Obama unable to govern like he campaigns"... a painfully funny front-page teaser at the L.A. Times...

... takes us to a more-painful-because-they're-serious headline: "Why can't Obama run the government as smoothly as his campaign?" Subhead: "The president increasingly seems to be battling top-level management failures as much as policy or political problems, observers say."

Remember when Obama, running for President in 2008, was asked what executive experience he had and he said running his campaign was executive experience?

Well, you know, my understanding is, is that Governor Palin's town of Wasilla has, I think, 50 employees. We have got 2,500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe $12 million a year. You know, we have a budget of about three times that just for the month. So, I think that our ability to manage large systems and to execute, I think, has been made clear over the last couple of years. And, certainly, in terms of the legislation that I passed just dealing with this issue post-Katrina of how we handle emergency management, the fact that many of my recommendations were adopted and are being put in place as we speak, I think, indicates the degree to which we can provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.

Manage large systems... provide the kinds of support and good service that the American people expect.... 

Back to the L.A. Times:

As a candidate, he vowed to restore government competence to earn back trust, and to make a case for expanding the government's role in people's lives.

"We simply cannot afford to perpetuate a system in Washington where politicians and bureaucrats make decisions behind closed doors, with little accountability for the consequences … and where outdated technology and information systems undermine efficiency, threaten our security and fail to serve an engaged citizenry," Obama said in 2009...

"It seems to be that this White House has no chain to the top, even just the conventional 'protect the boss' standard that ought to be in place everywhere," [said Bob Stone, project director of the Clinton-era government reform effort]. "When something is about to burst, you warn the boss. That's both a management issue and a political issue.... It's hard to see that the president has really had any interest in actually managing the government."

Sympathy for the euthanists.

Sherri Fink's "5 Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital" looks like a great book, based on the description in this NYT review. It appears to be an exciting and subtle account of what happened in an ICU at a hospital after Hurricane Katrina knocked out the power and delayed evacuation for 5 days. A doctor and 2 nurses were arrested for murder, based on the high levels of morphine and other drugs in the bodies of 20 of the 45 patients who died, but the grand jury did not indict them. 

Dr. Fink maintains a reporter’s detachment.... In following the machinations of a central witness — Dr. Frank Minyard, the city coroner, a colorful politician.... Dr. Fink shifts her focus from the horrific conditions in Memorial to considerations of justice. She gives proportional weight to Virginia Rider, a state investigator of Medicare fraud tasked with gathering evidence on the hospital deaths.

“Growing up in a state where politicians exploited every opportunity for corruption, she had deposited her faith in the burnished version of the American justice system her teachers had described in school,” Dr. Fink writes of Ms. Rider. “She believed, even to her ripe old early 40s, that good would prevail over evil. She had given so much of herself to this ideal.”

Ms. Rider’s passion may suggest a naïveté about the gray area in moral dynamics when things fall apart, but her confrontation with Dr. Minyard, after the grand jury refuses to indict, is a stunning scene. Dr. Fink does not condemn those Ms. Rider deemed guilty. But by reporting the depth of those gruesome hours in Memorial before the helicopters came, and giving weight to medical ethics as grounded in the law, Sheri Fink has written an unforgettable story.

Dr. Fink may "maintain a reporter’s detachment," but the reviewer, Jason Berry (author of "Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church") gives off a whiff of enthusiasm for euthanasia. Do you notice? Or is it just me? I'm looking for early symptoms of acceptance of euthanasia, which I believe will creep in as we Baby Boomers become more and more of a burden. Berry stresses Fink's evenhandedness, which makes me want to read the book but makes me suspect he'd prefer more opinion. It's fairly mild to say "may suggest a naïveté about the gray area in moral dynamics when things fall apart," but to my perhaps oversensitive perception, it suggests the opinion that sophisticated minds see — in all that complexity and nuance — a place for euthanasia.

The Most Pretentious Thing Ever Written About George Zimmerman.

This is Sasha Frere-Jones, writing about Jay Z’s new album (which is pretentiously titled "Magna Carta Holy Grail") in the (pretentious but traditionally a bit subtle in its pretentiousness) New Yorker:

Is charitable giving too emotional?

If you leave it to sentimental humans to determine where the money goes, you end up with a whole lot of guide dogs for the blind. Because: dogs! And: blindness!

And:

“My father gave a lot to religious stuff because he was religious... He was also a bleeding heart.” She recalled him crying as he watched the nightly news and then making a donation to a charity aimed at easing whatever troubling situation he had seen.

Remember all the money given to help the dogs seen in the news coverage after Hurricane Katrina?

Highlights from the Bush interview: "I'll be dead... our afterlife... assiduously."

I'm watching John King's interview with George and Laura Bush (on the occasion of the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum).

GEORGE BUSH: History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made for Iraq. And I'm just not going to be around to see the final verdict.

KING: Not going to be around. That's an interesting way to put it. You...

GEORGE BUSH (laughing): In other words, I'll be dead....

I don't know why King acted puzzled over the phrase "I'm just not going to be around," but it was hilarious when Bush clarified the term. Lightheartedness at the idea of one's own death is disarming, and coming after King's strange confusion, it made us laugh. Perhaps King was hoping to draw Bush into some deeper contemplation of death. That didn't happen. We get a glimpse of Bush's social skill.

Having said so bluntly "I'll be dead," it was striking when Bush proceeded to refer to the post-presidency period as the "afterlife."

Measured in terms of Integrated Kinetic Energy at landfall, Sandy was bigger than Katrina...

... and second only in modern records to Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Sandy only had Category 1 winds — while Katrina was Category 3 — but it was very large and thus had more IKE, which relates more strongly to the size of the storm surge.

[T]he storm surge is the increased water level along the coast caused by winds continuously bulldozing the ocean onto the land. It builds long before a storm makes landfall. It simply raises the mean sea level from its normal level by a few to over 25 feet.

Sandy also hit at high tide, making the surge higher. The damage from a surge also has to do with coastal topography and bathymetry.

Hurricane Katrina was “only” a Category 3 storm at landfall, yet ended up being the most costly natural disaster in our nation’s history due its impact on a vulnerable, highly populated low lying city. Sandy had Category 1 winds at landfall yet was able to create very significant storm surge over hundreds of miles of highly populated coastline.

I found that article because I was trying to figure out what "category" Sandy was. I wasn't sure it was even Category 1, and I wondered what would happen if a Category 3 (or 4 or 5) storm hit NYC.  I also found this article in Popular Mechanics, describing a study of the consequences of a Category 4 hurricane hitting NYC. The estimate was $500 billion in damage. A study released last September said a "Category 1 hurricane or winter nor'easter could inundate the city's subway and cause $58 billion in losses"... which sounds like what happened.

Did Chris Christie "sudden love-in" with Obama hurt Mitt Romney?

"Sudden love-in" is the Washington Post's terminology.

There is no professed motivation for Christie’s newfound feelings for the president, other than that the two men are now partners in a massive effort to rebuild his state. Asked about the election on “Fox & Friends,” Christie said, “I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” adding: “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

I want to say Chris Christie is saying and doing the right thing, not only morally and in his own political interest, but in the interest of Mitt Romney and the GOP. Saying it's not political and acting like politics are suspended, the best approach morally, happens also to be the best approach politically.

It's good politically because it's a vivid demonstration of devotion to public service and the capacity to rise about partisanship and do the things that need to be done.

Compare the Christie's interaction with Obama to the way Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco interacted with President Bush after Hurricane Katrina. Here's how Bush described some of it in his book "Decision Points" (at page 308-309):

The initial plan had been for me to land at the New Orleans airport, pick up Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, and survey the damage on an aerial tour. But on the Marine One flight from Mississippi, we received word that the governor, mayor, and a Louisiana congressional delegation were demanding a private meeting on Air Force One first.

The tone started out tense and got worse. The governor and mayor bickered. Everyone blasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to meet their needs. Congressman Bobby Jindal pointed out that FEMA had asked people to email their requests, despite the lack of electricity in the city. I shook my head. “We’ll fix it,” I said, looking at FEMA Director Mike Brown. Senator Mary Landrieu interrupted with unproductive emotional outbursts. “Would you please be quiet?” I had to say to her at one point.

What standard of living should others feel moved to lift you up to? Question 1: What's your "social context"?

We saw in that NYT article about the "FUCK! I'm in my twenties" girl Emma Koenig that her mother had to do some analysis before deciding to help pay for her $1,200-a-month East Village apartment. The key line was: "It made me see that Emma’s social context was such that our helping with her rent was legitimate..."

It made me think about the refugees of Hurricane Katrina, housed in the Houston Astrodome, about whom presidential wife and mother Barbara Bush famously said:

"And so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

What's your social context? Is that the right question?

"In other cities, charter schools exist in spite of the system. Here they are the system."

Says John White, the superintendent of New Orleans public schools.

The results are encouraging. Five years ago, 23% of children scored at or above "basic" on state tests; now 48% do. Before Katrina, 62% attended failing schools; less than a fifth do today. The gap between city kids and the rest of the state is narrowing....

By 2013, New Orleans plans to have the country's first "all charter" school system.