Will the Bush Presidency be a Katrina Fatality

[mburbank]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Katrina has drowned the Bush Presidency. In it's wake, the man who in debate against Al Gore said that how you reacted to a natural isaster showed what kind of leader you were will be fully exposed as the kind of Leader he's always been. His tin ear and emotional emptiness are on display as never before, and the managment style of the CEO president will finally be exposed for the corrupt sham it's been all along. The emeror has never had any clothes. The tragedy is that it takes a tragedy of this magnituide to wash the scales from our collective eyes.

Consider this, from Time Magazine, never exactly noted for it's liberal bias:

It isn't easy picking George Bush's worst moment last week. Was it his first go at addressing the crisis Wednesday, when he came across as cool to the point of uncaring? Was it when he said that he didn't "think anybody expected" the New Orleans levees to give way, though that very possibility had been forecast for years? Was it when he arrived in Mobile, Ala., a full four days after the storm made landfall, and praised his hapless Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director, Michael D. Brown, whose disaster credentials seemed to consist of once being the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association? "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," said the President. Or was it that odd moment when he promised to rebuild Mississippi Senator Trent Lott's house--a gesture that must have sounded astonishingly tone-deaf to the homeless black citizens still trapped in the postapocalyptic water world of New Orleans. "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house--he's lost his entire house," cracked Bush, "there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."


They forgot to add the photo of him noodling on a guitar backstage at a fundraiser while people were dying in New Orleans. I think that too will hang around hus neck along with all of the above as more and more bodies are pulled out of the mud.

George W didn't cause the hurricane. But under his leadership poverty increased dramatically, budgets were cut dramatcially, and the vulnerability of the people of the Gulf coast was increased. And when these people fell victim to natural disaster, his leadership style and his incompetent crony appointees left them stranded. As his own wife says, 'it's a wake up call'.

I don't think King George can wriggle out of this one.