Thoughts on the politics of Katrina

Now that real progress has been achieved in the clean up and eventual reconstruction of Louisiana and Mississippi the political show has hit full swing. Every liberal under the sun is attempting to make the Federal Government's failure to respond quickly into a systematic string of failures that have supposedly plagued the Bush White House. Conservatives are countering by attacking state and local officials (most of which were Democrats). When that doesn't work though, many conservatives are just attacking the liberals who are attacking Bush. So as you can imagine the productivity per word ratio is very very low.

With that said, I have some brief comments that I will try to make productive.

I don't think liberals will gain any traction by attempting to make the failure to respond into a long line of Bush failures. Everyone and their mother seems to be attempting to tie Katrina into Iraq or 9/11 or Global Warming or Karl Rove; none of them work for me. I do think that the federal government and Bush in particular should have been quicker in providing assistance, but I don't think this failure is endemic of any bias the White House may have to any race, region, or economic status. When it comes down to it, the federal government just seriously fucked up. Michael Brown is going to hang because of it (on a related note, have you seen a picture of that guy where he doesn't look like a deer in the headlights). Bush is going to have to deal with the embarrassment of giving "Brownie" the FEMA job when he had zero qualifications but I doubt the Democrats are going to gain any seats when their best valid complaint is that Bush is too political in his appointments, which is something inherent in the political process.

That of course is the real reason for all the political noise. Midterm elections are coming up and for Democrats to win anything they need to turn this disaster into something that confirms a preconceived notion of Bush. That is why Monica sunk Clinton and Iranian hostages killed Carter; because it was not just a stupid public relations mistake, it confirmed what everyone suspected of them. That is also why the stillborn Karl Rove scandal probably sunk Bush's ratings as far as Katrina will. Bush is perceived to be secretive, vindictive, and single minded in his dedication to getting what he wants. But Bush is not perceived to be, nor do I think he actually is, uncaring of people in need.

The best Democrats can hope for is a scandal as a result of this failure. Perhaps Rove or Cheney will slip up and get vindictive on someone attempting to expose a particular gaffe by the White House (think Joe Wilson 2.0, but maybe this time well timed and with teeth).

-Mr. Alec