From a piece by Knight-Ridder’s Steven Thomma:
The president’s style could hurt him as well.
Bush kept his normal schedule during the first days of the hurricane and its aftermath. He traveled to San Diego, then back to his Texas ranch. He didn’t return to Washington until Wednesday, viewing some of the storm damage from the window of Air Force One.
He went to the Gulf Coast on Friday. He said the results were unacceptable. But when he addressed the official in charge of the disaster relief, Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, Bush offered congratulations. “Brownie,” Bush said, “you’re doing a heck of a job.”
When he got to New Orleans, he toured only by helicopter. He did not meet with any of the angry survivors who were asking for food, water or medical attention.
That was a stark contrast to his appearance in New York after the 2001 attacks, when he spent hours with the families of the dead and missing and climbed aboard a debris-covered fire truck, one arm around a New York firefighter and the other brandishing a bullhorn that came to symbolize his success at rallying the country.
” Where was the bullhorn? Where was his hard hat?” asked Paul Light, a political scientist at New York University. “The president has exposed himself to criticism by not reacting faster, not showing greater concern for what was going on.”
Indeed. Today GWB will go back to the storm-decimated region. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he’s checking on the situation there and wants to communicate in no uncertain terms his true feelings and determination. Not giving him the benefit of the doubt, he’s trying to undo damage to his image and re-do his image.
But we can say one thing:
All of the Presidents’ during our lifetime — Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F Kennedy, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, the first George Bush and Bill Clinton — would have immediately rallied the nation, focused the national need to help victims, taken firm hold of federal rescue-aid machinery, and subsequently symbolized the strength, sincerity, and efficiency of the American Presidency and the federal government during a time of crisis.
This wasn’t done.
And what did they say about Humpty Dumpty?
UPDATE:
— Tom Watson looks at Bush, the impact of Katrina — and offers Democrats some blunt advice. Here’s a small excerpt (read the rest yourself):
George Bush is President of this country for another three and a half years. We have no parliamentary out clause, no hope of changing governments….But the power of the Bush presidency is at an ebb; he will never again hold the moral high ground, never again lead the American people, never again speak for more than the narrowest minority of Americans. He has failed, and will go on forever in history as one of the worst men to have ever held the office.
–The Mighty Middle’s Michael Reynolds predicts what’ll come next.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.