Katrina Anniversary Approaches / Bush Stages Photo-Op
I hope everyone all got a chance to see the Spike Lee documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts", which I blogged about on Monday. It was excellent; really covered all the angles of the tragedy, with a needed focus on the human element of what happened. If you missed it, HBO will air all four parts together this Tuesday, the anniversary of when Katrina made landfall.
As that anniversary approaches, the Bush administration prepares ways to deal with acknowleding one of their greatest domestic failures. Needless to say, a renewed effort to fulfill the promises of last September isn't high on the list. As is the specialty, expect just empty rhetoric.
AP: Bush: Katrina recovery will take time
President Bush cautioned against placing too much importance on the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's Gulf Coast strike, saying a long, sustained rebuilding effort is still needed...
Translation? President Bush: 'Please don't think about the Katrina anniversary at all... so that I can smash you over the head with the 9/11 anniversary until the elections! Woooooooo!'. This is also part of a concerted GOP effort to marginalize the Katrina anniversary, trying to paint it as merely a "regional concern" and not a national issue.
Of course not all of the delays in rebuilding are the federal government's fault (the barely-existed WTC site construction efforts demonstrate how local politics can bring these projects to a standstill due to bureaucratic nonsense... insert comment here about Nagin, stones, and glass houses), but the President took ultimate responsibility for the rebuilding last September and has all but abandoned his many lofty promises to the people of the Gulf Coast.
And yet the White House somehow found time to stage an elaborate photo-op this week.
From the AP article-
Bush spoke on the South Lawn of the White House after meeting in the Oval Office with a New Orleans-area man who lost his home in the storm. Rockey Vaccarella, 41, of Meraux in St. Bernard Parish, has been traveling the Gulf Coast region to mark the Katrina anniversary...
..."I told Rockey the first obligation of the federal government is to write a check big enough to help the people down there," Bush said. "And I told him that to the extent that there's still bureaucratic hurdles, and the need for the federal government to help eradicate those hurdles, we want to do that."
Vaccarella said he wanted to thank Bush for the federally provided trailers that have provided temporary housing to many in the region who lost homes, but also to keep the pressure on...
The official story goes that Mr. Vaccarella had traveled all the way from the Gulf Coast trying to get a meeting with the President and- unlike Cindy Sheehan last summer- was indeed granted one. The President's meeting with Mr. Vaccarella, and his praise for the President, was all over the news yesterday, but the media didn't ask too many questions.
If they had, they would've discovered, as Philadelphia Daily News blogger Will Bunch did, that- "Turns out that the earthy Vaccarella -- a highly successful businessman in the fast-food industry -- is indeed a Republican pol, having run unsuccessfully under the GOP banner for a seat on the St. Bernard Parish commission back in 1999... And in fact, Vaccarella seemed very confident that he would be meeting with Bush when he left home, to the point where he had a date scheduled and everything." Surprise! Another blogger looks at his trailer, which doesn't appear to be an official FEMA one at all.
Think Progress has video of Bush and Vaccarella from a news report on CNN.
David Weigel, guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan, shakes his head at this photo-op, stating "Even if this deep, dark secret never matriculates outside the blogs, I'm wracking my brains to understand the point of this 'PR coup.' Is a cheerful white guy really the mascot who can erase Bush's Katrina problem? Is his sing-song praise of federal spending going to motivate the GOP base? More evidence that Rove's touch has lost any of its Midas-like qualities."
Digby has another great analysis along these lines: Massaging Katrina.
This sums of the President's leadership (as we have seen through numerous crises)- Watch a major disaster unfold, do nothing, assign blame, make a number of false promises, and stage photo-ops and media blitzes to counter all of that. Actual leadership, sacrifices, compassion, or results will not be forthcoming.
To see the (continuing) tragedy of New Orleans- and the Gulf Coast at large- deemphasized and written off with another White House photo-op is disgusting. This a real tragedy, real people are suffering, and a real American city was totaled. These failures did not end last September- they continue today.
I hope the White House won't succeed in making Americans lose sight of that.
posted by BlueDuck @ 8:20 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
What do you think about what Ray Nagin said today? To sum it up, when asked why there were still rusted-out cars sitting on the streets of the Ninth Ward, he replied "You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed, and it's five years later. So let's be fair," (www.cnn.com).
When someone makes this immature of a response to a fair question (trying to deflect criticism to an unrelated person is very junior high), it only reaffirms his complete incapability as a leader.
That said, I cannot help but think that people who already hate Bush are using Katrina as just another way to attack him, in my opinion unfairly. I do not like Bush at all, and I'm sure his lack of leadership contributed to what happened after Katrina hit. But when the LOCAL leader, the FIRST guy on the food chain in New Orleans comes out with an assinine statement like this, it becomes (even more) apparent to me that he holds a significant portion of the blame for the failure in response.
Read my post more carefully... I did mention Nagin's comment (in second paragraph following the AP link), along with a snarky remark that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, yada yada.
And yes Nagin's remark was a bit crass, but I also thought it was called for. As a New Yorker, I have been following the Ground Zero story very closely since 2001. Nagin is correct; the local NY officials should be ashamed of themselves. Five years later, they can't (won't?) "get a hole in the ground fixed". Greed, infighting, and bureaucratic BS have left Ground Zero looking about the same as in late 2001. That is a national disgrace. While Nagin may not be the appropriate spokesman, it is an issue that should be called attention to.
As for all the focus on Bush on the anniversary, that is appropriate. He is the President and is ultimately responsible for the fallout from the flooding. And the fact that he remained on vacation- eating cake with Sen McCain, giving speeches on random issues, strumming a guitar in San Diego- as the Gulf Coast was laid to waste is borderline criminal. He took days to even acknowledge the disaster... and when he got there, all he did was stage photo-ops and slap Michael Brown on the back. I don't think Bush's Katrina failures can be overstated.
Nagin may not have done a great job, but at least he was there. And unlike Bush, the people of New Orleans had an opportunity to hold Nagin accountable in the recent election... like it or not, they decided to keep him for some reason.
In the end, Nagin was not as responsible as Bush and the federal government apparatis. Nagin couldn't mobilize the National Guard, he couldn't call in the Coast Guard, he couldn't arrange supplies and medicine, etc... he needed the federal gov't for that and they- not him- dropped that ball.
For instance, the DHS website says: "In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort."
The story of Katrina is a story of federal failure.
It's not Bush bashing to point that out. The people of New Orleans deserve accountability for that and they deserve to have the promises Bush made to them kept.
If New Orleans is where Ground Zero is in 5 years, it will be another tragedy.
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