A Price to Pay?

Questions about whether anyone is in charge of the nation’s affairs are never a good thing for a president. But the post-hurricane crisis arrived at an especially perilous moment for Bush, whose popularity has been battered by rising gasoline prices and public unease over the war in Iraq.

“It’s too far out to extrapolate,” said Charlie Cook, an independent political analyst. “But for now, House and Senate Republicans are pretty much joined at the hip with the president…. When he falls in the polls, it’s not good for them.”

And at the end of the day, standing on the tarmac at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, the president struck an upbeat note. He called for a national recovery effort and joked that its goal would be to rebuild a hard-partying city “where I used to come … to enjoy myself, occasionally too much.”

[Political hack, David] Gergen, who now teaches at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said he believed Bush had made a strong if belated effort at correcting his administration’s slow start.

“He made a pivot today that was important: He acknowledged that the results have been unacceptable,” Gergen said. “That was an important embrace of reality that was missing from their early statements. It gives him a chance to rally.

“If food pours in, if the National Guard pours in, he’s pivoted out of a period of fumbling into a period of ‘We’re taking charge.'”

“I think he still has time to recover politically, and I think it’s likely he will,” Gergen said. “He’s good at this. You’ll see a better Bush during the next few days, in charge and compassionate. But if he doesn’t, there’s going to be a serious political price to pay.”