One year after Hurricane Katrina, the people have not forgotten:
“Bush did nothing for the people,” said one Republican, Joseph Ippolito, 75, a retired highway superintendent from Bayville, N.J. “Bush didn’t have the proper people in office to take care of Katrina. The whole administration is wacky — and I voted twice for him.”
Fifty-one percent of the people are dissatisfied with the way Bush responded to the emergency and 44% still have little or no confidence in his administration to handle a similar emergency, should it arise. This is quite different from Bill Clinton’s experience. When the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed, Clinton was able to rise to the occassion, show true compassion, and win the trust of the people. His sagging Presidency rebounded, and his reelection was assured. Not so, for Bush. His reputation remains in tatters.
“This is a real black mark on his administration, and it’s going to stay with him for a long time,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “It will be in every textbook.”
But Bush oh so wishes that we would forget Katrina, forget My Pet Goat, forget the August 6th memo, forget his frantic flight to Nebraska, forget his promise to wage a crusade, forget that he didn’t even know the difference between Shi’a and Sunnis before he asked Richard Clarke to find phantom evidence against Iraq…
Yes, if we can forget all of that, then maybe we can see him again standing on the rubble with his bullhorn, talking tough and making us feel better for a half a moment. Never in history has a politician attempted to get more mileage out of a single photo op. For me, Bush will always be reading My Pet Goat.
“I couldn’t stop watching the president sitting there, listening to second-graders, while my husband was burning in a building.” -Lorie van Auken.
That is my image. I even wrote an article (.pdf) about it. For many others, the image is of Bush peering out Air Force One as New Orleans drowned. Here’s Senator Susan Collins (R-ME):
“Unfortunately, it may be hard to erase the regrettable photo of him on Air Force One looking down at the destruction and devastation below,” she said. “That’s a searing and very unfortunate image that doesn’t reflect the president’s compassion.”
Anyone that expects compassion from George W. Bush has paid no attention to his curriculum vitae. He started out blowing up frogs with firecrackers and he hasn’t let up or changed his ways for anyone. With over 40,000 innocent lives already on his hands, he has nothing left to lose. If there is a hell, his place in it is secured.
Soulless bastards.
soulless heartless butt ugly ignorant bastards
The air guitar one sticks with me too…
But what else can one expect from a prezdint that loves fart jokes?
I was thinking the same.. but the only jokes Bush likes are fart jokes.. and that really blows.
not just Bush, not just Katrina.
That should be hung around Mr. “Straight talk”‘s neck and bury any shot he has at the 2008 nomination.
I usually watch his stupid fucking speeches when they’re on prime time, and I’m assuming he’s doing the same tonight/tomorrow. But I’m not sure I’m gonna be able to sit down and watch it this time around, I’d rather not be reduced to hurling things at my TV.
One of the most shocking things I’ve seen on TV has been the pictures of New Orleans NOW, still looking like the aftermath of a disaster in a third-world country as rebuilding is kept on hold while developers and polticians dream of new, safe, bland, white “revitalization”. I’m about as cynical as you can get without becoming a Republican, but the Katrina saga shot right through the blase armor and shook me to my core. Looking at it with a year-long perspective is like having the mask ripped away and seeing the maggoty decay where there should be a face.
What makes it so powerful is that that face is not just Bush or Cheney or the GOP. It’s America, and it’s not just corruption or incompetence or indifference, but a deadly combination of those and additional qualities that are nearly impossible to pin down and define. Something is really terribly wrong with our country and it goes beyond elections and ideology.
It became a cliche that Sept 11 changed everything. With the benefit of hindsight, I’ve come to believe that the Katrina story will resonate and shape perceptions about America long after the wounds of Sept 11 have healed.
Sept 11 was seen as mostly about “them”, the enemy who attacked us. It was deeply terrifying. It shook our confidence in our security and our place in the world. But there were stories of heroism by public workers and individuals, there was some sense that a response was made (foolish and dishonest tho that response turned out to be in retrospect).
In Katrina, the cause, of course, was a natural disaster, but the real damage came from incompetence and indifference and jockeying for advantage at every level of our own government. I can’t recall in my lifetime a clearer revelation of how our class/money obsessions extend even unto life and death decisions about our own people. It calls into question the value of some of our most strongly held beliefs and myths about our society, our economic system, our political system, and our national soul. I think it will percolate through generations, mutating and shaping as it goes, the way the Civil War or WWII still do in this country, or the Ottoman or Roman empires or European imperialism still do elsewhere. It will, now or later, change everything. Those who recognize this will be in position to affect the shape of that change. Those who do not reckon with it will be lost voices. It’s time to respond now, not just to the past, not just to New Orleans and the Gulf, but to the future of this country.
Wow. I don’t think it was quite that significant. It was hugely revelatory, and shocking. It will always be a large part of Bush’s legacy. But compared to Iraq and 9/11 it will be a blip.
It should and may have some long-term political effects, which should be net positive. From that standpoint it was less of a disaster than Gore v. Bush, 9/11, or the War in Iraq.
You’re talking rational history. I’m talking about things that change the psyche of a society. Sept 11 changed our feeling of invulnerabilty but promoted a feeling of nationalism and — at least at first — a “can-do” spirit. To my mind, it revealed little that was really surprising.
Katrina’s history challenges our deepest myths about American competence, compassion, and its place among the nations of the world. You’re talking about realities. I’m talking about how deep and habitual viewpoints change. I think Katrina will make Americans begin to suspect, for the first time ever, that there’s a third-world country hidden just beneath our slick paint job, and that any of us, anywhere, any time, could slip into it. Maybe I’m just overreacting to the recent pictures, but right now I doubt it. Time will tell.
actually both events, 9/11 and Katrina, as well as the sustained blackout, gave a feeling that the order of society was much more tenuous than we’d like to believe.
I think Katrina was that significant, even on a rational level. It was somethign close to home, like 9/11. Yes, it was caused by an ‘enemy’ the way 9/11 was but it did resemble a metaphorical Titanic in the way that rich peopel got out asap while the poor were just left behind.
Further, with the WTC the mess was cleaned up after a year, more or less, whereas with NO it still looks awful over there. We have on one hand the wealthy as represented by the owners of the WTC gettign cleaned up as fast as money can be thrown at the problem.
On the other hand we have the wealthier sections of NO getting cleaned up remarkably fast, gambling houses already having been reset (of course the wealthioer areas tookless damange anyway) while the poorer areas are just left. The previous families can elect to rebuild but they ahve to do it. This has become a symbol of what our society has become.
I think this event will fester. After all, more Katrinas are likely to happen. It’s not a question of if but when.