Not Learning The Lessons

A couple of odds and ends about the Katrina anniversary as a followup to my last post. Harry Shearer- who has been on top of this story all year better than any real journalist outside Louisiana- laments that the news coverage is solely focusing on the emotion of the story and not delving into the substance. Sounds like par for the course for that lot, though. They'll be back to John Karr tomorrow. (Sidenote: the complete absence of Katrina posts on the conservative sites I visited today- Drudge, Malkin, Powerline, etc- speaks volumes).

One journalist who does seem to get it is Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. He wrote a column for the current issue that addresses in detail the substory of Katrina I focused on earlier... the class/race issues that Katrina exposed and how we failed to remember that moment and act upon it. He writes-

A year ago, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, NEWSWEEK published a cover story called "Poverty, Race and Katrina: Lessons of a National Shame." The article suggested that the disaster was prompting a fresh look at "The Other America"—the 37 million Americans living below the poverty line. "It takes a hurricane," I wrote. "It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again." I ended on a hopeful note: "What kind of president does George W. Bush want to be? ... If he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it."...

...Well, it turned out that the critics were largely right. Not only has the president done much less than he promised on the financing and logistics of Gulf Coast recovery, he has dropped the ball entirely on using the storm and its aftermath as an opportunity to fight poverty. Worker recovery accounts and urban homesteading never got off the ground, and the new enterprise zone is mostly an opportunity for Southern companies owned by GOP campaign contributors to make some money in New Orleans. The mood in Washington continues to be one of not-so-benign neglect of the problems of the poor...

...If the president was MIA, Congress hasn't been much better. Consider the estate tax and the minimum wage. The House in June passed a steep reduction of the estate tax (so as to apply only to couples leaving more than $10 million to their heirs) that would cost the Treasury three quarters of a trillion dollars over the next decade. Last time I checked, that was real money. Senate Republicans tried to push it through by linking the bill to an increase in the minimum wage, which has not been raised in nine years. The idea was to get credit for giving crumbs to the working poor—but only if the superrich receive hundreds of billions of dollars. Fortunately, the bill failed. Unfortunately, other tax cuts for the wealthy keep moving through the system, ballooning the deficit and drying up money for everything else. Meanwhile, the GOP wants to make welfare reform (now 10 years old) more punitive, which will increase suffering...

...After all the heat he took last year, how could Bush have blown the aftermath of Katrina? It's not as if he lacks confidence in the power of his office. He believes he can fix Iraq and transform the Middle East. He aspires to spread democracy to the far corners of the globe. But the fate of an American city and millions of his impoverished countrymen are apparently beyond his control, or perhaps just his interest.

It's almost assuredly the latter; we're the most powerful country on earth, there's no question that the President and the Congress could have successfully acted on this issue if they wanted to (we've come out of much worse situations- wars, a Great Depression- the better). They didn't want to.

Finally, once again the editorial page of the NY Post continues to surpass all other print media outlets as the top Bush apologist with another ludicrous editorial (I recently lambasted their writeup on the warrantless wiretapping ruling). Snarking that instead of a "National Day of Remembrance" today is actually a "National Day of Misinformation", they proceed to insist that the federal response was actually really good and the liberal media just lied to everyone. This sort of removal from reality brings to me flashbacks to Barbara Bush in the Astrodome, chuckling about those displaced that "So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this... is working very well for them."

To prove their point about how great the response was, they cite that "The Coast Guard, state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries and National Guard rescued 70,000 people. They pre-positioned food and supplies and set up medical facilities that treated 5,000 victims (and delivered seven babies)." Impressive numbers on the surface, yes, but that's not the whole story- it leaves out the first several chapters of this sad tale. No one claimed that rescue missions never arrived to New Orleans. Those rescues may have occurred, but the Post purposely ignores that they arrived too late and ill-organized... at the cost of hundreds and hundreds of lives that did not need to be lost. That was the story of Katrina- people stranded on roofs or in the Superdome for days before the federal government (who admitted they only knew what was happening by watching CNN) even managed to find their way to one of the country's largest port cities. Some organizations (the Coast Guard) did far better than others (FEMA, etc), but to insist that the response was the "largest, most successful aerial search-and-rescue operation in history" is insulting and unreal.

Furthermore, they complain about bias and then attempt to make the lackluster Nagin the sole scapegoat for all the government failures. They go so far as to state that the idea that Bush blew it during Katrina "is nearly as destructive to the picture of what happened as the storm itself". WOW. That's some serious cult-level hubris. Perhaps the Post editorial writers need to revisit the timeline and remember that, as Katrina approached, the President actually traveled in the other direction, first to Arizona where he gave a speech on Iraq and then later ate cake with John McCain, and then to San Diego where he played guitar in a military photo-op, and then returned back to Crawford. Days after the storm, and after flying over the damage in Air Force One, he finally arrived in the region on September 2nd... only to stage several more photo-ops, make jokes about Trent Lott's porch, and tell Brownie he did a heck of a job. I'm sorry for mentioning that, though, as doing so is apparently as destructive as the storm itself. They also blow off that infamous Air Force One picture- and the message that it sent to Americans. Given that it is universally agreed by most people in this country that Katrina/New Orleans represents one of the greatest failures of Bush's presidency- and of government in general- it is mindblowing to see the lengths his cult followers will go to erase that.

They close by stating we have "much to learn from Katrina". They are 100% right. But if we can't even agree upon what the reality is, then that ain't gonna happen.

This was a seminal moment in modern American history. It spoke volumes about the fragile state of our national infrastructure, the state of our government after years of modern conservativism in control, how we as nation deals with class/race, and how the war on terror has impacted our national priorities and resources. It is clear that, as with 9/11, we will be too busy having rhetorical battles to ever learn the lessons and move on. And that's just sad and pathetic.