Katrina Effect and Bush

27 August 2006 |permalink | email article

The appearance by President Bush Monday and Tuesday on the Gulf Coast to mark the first anniversary of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina ironically occurs as Tropical Storm Ernesto has become the first hurricane of the 2006 Atlantic season with the possibility of entering the Gulf of Mexico within days.

(The projection today was that Ernesto, now a Category 1 in the Caribbean, would hit the U.S. Gulf Coast by early Tuesday, and could menace Lousiana or, as seemed more possible at midday, veer toward Southern Florida.  A recurrence so soon after Katrina would have a doomsday impact on New Orleans, affecting people in temporary housing, notably 115,00 families mostly in FEMA trailers. Army engineers reportedly differ about whether levees are yet ready to withstand a possible Katrina-like Category 3.) 

That unthinkable possibility aside, the White House said W. will accept responsibility for the post-Katrina slow response while insisting the government has learned from the Katrina mistakes and promising complete the reconstruction of the Gulf Coast.

He will tout $110 billion in resources for the region, restoration of more than 220 miles of New Orleans’ flood walls and levees, and addition of floodgates to protect against storm surges. These resources seem paltry compared to the billions earmarked to rebuild Iraq in the name of democracy turned into sectarian quagmire civil war opposed by a majority of Americans.

August has never been a good month for W. on his Texas vacations.He learned on 8/6/01, without specificity, about a possible Osama bin Ladin air strike on the U.S. On his ranch in late August just before Katrina blew and as the antiwar moment gathered speed, the Gallup Poll found 60% perceived him as a strong and decisive leader. A week and a hurricane later, he fell to 52% and by mid-September plunged to 49% on the way down.

His ineptness then still lingers in the national psyche, despite an act of contrition, about images like his bizarre overflight aboard Air Force One viewing the devastated region, subsequent tardy visit and fatuous “heck of a job, Brownie” commendation of Michael D. Brown, then director of FEMA.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek thinks those events only made the impact of Katrina much more powerful. “The sort of limited commitment that this president has to using federal power to ameliorate domestic problems registered powerfully in this Katrina episode. It trigged Bush’s downfall,” he told the Washington Post.

A Yale history major, 43 failed to grasp the leadership which FDR exerted during the Great Depression in effectively marshaling the Federal Housing Authority, the Civil Works Administration, the Public Works Administration - and in his response to the Dust Bowl crisis when strong winds removed unprotected top soil during dust storms in areas of U.S. prairie states during the 1930s.

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