»New Orleans catastrophe caused by George W. Bush«

PRESIDENT Bush may have made many mistakes in the past few months, but he has made real progress on his promise to heal the wounds of last year’s presidential election campaign. It split America in two, but both sides are now uniting: against him.

In Congress, a revolt is growing among Republicans dismayed by his handling of Hurricane Katrina – seeing it as the last straw of ineptness. Right-wing columnists are fast joining their left-wing enemies to form a stereophonic attack.

Every move the president makes to show he is taking command over Hurricane Rita only serves as a reminder of what he should have done during Katrina. Last year’s hero of the right is now seen as an embarrassment to conservatism.

In New York, from where these words are written, the small but dedicated band of Republicans are in despair. They swallowed hard and backed Bush to the hilt in the election – but now find warnings of the Democrat neighbours coming true. It isn’t that Bush is demonic, stupid or corrupt – though all these labels are attached to him, still, in home-made posters stuck to Manhattan lampposts. There is one charge that Republicans and Democrats are now agreeing on: incompetence.

Just as Katrina tore up houses along the Gulf Coast, it has blown the lid of the way the White House works – or, as it turns out, doesn’t work. The picture is of an aloof presidency in charge of neglected and dysfunctional government agencies.

What most hurts conservatives who voted for Bush is that they believe government should do very few things: but discharge its core responsibilities well. They find the failure to handle disaster management unforgivable. It has emerged, for example, that the president took so long to recognise the full scope of Katrina because he neither watches television news nor reads newspapers. More worryingly, he is allowed to be kept in the dark. No head of state can be expected to digest all each day’s papers. But they need an Alastair Campbell figure to burst into their office and demand they switch on the television or read a troublesome article.
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But can the presidency really be called conservative? This is at the core of the new charge against him. Since coming to power, he has surpassed even Gordon Brown in government spending: increasing it by 35% over his first term. But while the Labour Chancellor is doing this deliberately, and noisily, it seems to happen by accident to Bush. The money just slips out, the deficit grows higher – and it is this fiscal incontinence which dismays conservatives. As if by apology for his mishandling of Katrina, he has pledged to spend $200bn on its aftermath. In Congress, restive Republicans want to cut 100 government schemes to cover this: Bush simply wants to add it to his gargantuan deficit. His key missions – social security reform, tax cuts for the rich and the reconstruction of Iraq – have all been dismally executed. Conservatives can now say so, as they are released from their obligation to support a president who cannot stand again.
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He has turned surplus into deficit, botched reforms, squandered political capital and his response to Katrina will be neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Get Off His Back
September 19, 2005

By Ben Stein for The American Spectator

A few truths [about Katrina], for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:

1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.

3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.

4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated.

5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.

7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.

8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.

9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.

10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.

11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.

12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush.