Coming Up Short
The Bush family has always had a very complicated relationship with hurricanes. In 1992, President Bush the Elder was criticized for acting too slowly in sending in federal relief when Hurricane Andrew killed 26 people in South Florida. One of his sons, Jeb Bush, now Florida's governor, spends much of his time on hurricane disaster relief--and three quarters of his constituents say he does a good job. As for President George W. Bush, the record is decidedly mixed. Before last year's election, when Hurricane Charley slammed into Florida, Bush was eager to announce disaster relief and personally appear in the crucial battleground state. Yet when Katrina began to destroy the Gulf Coast, all he could muster was a plan to cut his vacation short by two days to announce the nation's largest-ever federal relief effort, which, by his own later admission, was "not acceptable."
That's an understatement. The relief was late and, early on, woefully inadequate. And, by the way, while the waters were rising on the Gulf Coast last Tuesday, why was the president in San Diego defending his Iraq policy? While tens of thousands went homeless and millions lost their power, the president argued that American troops must stay put to protect, of all things, Iraqi oil fields. Meantime, Katrina was shutting down eight major refineries, New Orleans was in chaos, and Americans were being gouged at the pump. Sure, a litany of complaints came post 9/11, too, when the president failed to return immediately to Washington from a Florida trip. But once he was back, standing with a bullhorn at ground zero, Bush became almost iconic--a leader vowing justice for the terrorists, which was exactly what the nation wanted.
This is different. There is no "evildoer" to defeat, just gross incompetence and poor planning. And President Bush enters this crisis with baggage he didn't have in 2001--his own sagging popularity linked to an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. All of which inspires obvious questions about whether more National Guard units would have responded sooner had the service not been stretched so thin. And whether the terrorist-fighting Department of Homeland Security (which now oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency) has undermined FEMA's effectiveness as a disaster relief agency.
Suddenly, there is a convergence of national politics and natural disaster. As the scope of the catastrophe became clear, it became inevitably tied to Iraq--and the president's choices. The nation's willingness to spend billions overseas now will be measured against the needs at home. The woeful state of Baghdad's electrical grid will be compared with the grid in New Orleans. So, too, with homelessness and rampant crime: Americans will want a long-term effort to fix the Gulf Coast and stick with it, just as the president came up with a plan he steadfastly clings to for Iraq. There is no emergency in Baghdad now that trumps the chaos in New Orleans.
Bleak picture. The job at home is almost unimaginable. Estimates for relief efforts range in the tens of billions, and Congress last week returned to make sure the bills start getting paid. Forget any realistic plan to reduce the federal deficit. And what about the administration's decision to cut Army Corps of Engineer funds that left this region so vulnerable to this kind of natural disaster? Who will assume the blame for that? And what will the president tell us as gas prices rise daily? He has already tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to soften the oil shock from the disruption of production in the Gulf. But late last week, gas lines a la the 1970s began to return. That's never a good political picture; just ask Jimmy Carter.
Then there's this: the underlying story that so many of those trapped in New Or leans or Gulfport or Biloxi were stranded because they didn't have enough money to leave. They are poor, mostly black; now they are destitute. (So much for the GOP outreach to African-Americans.) Now they need charity and federal assistance. And we need to know why they were left to suffer and die. George W. Bush needs to tell us and to find a way to help them put their lives back together while they mourn their dead. That's what presidents do. No bullhorn amid the rubble, just an outstretched hand and palpable help.
After the president flew over the affected areas last week, he told ABC: "The image that sticks in my mind the most is somebody sitting on a rooftop waving a flag saying, 'Come and get me.' " So why didn't we?
This story appears in the September 12, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.