Tom Watson offers a blunt analysis of the Hurricane Katrina disaster fiasco and offers an equally blunt conclusion in two posts: he contends it is a failure of conservatism.
He offers two highly provocative posts that must be read in full. In each, he pulls no punches, offering some specifics to back up conclusions such as this in the first post:
But it’s not just laziness and incompetence and lack of interest. I’ll tell you what it is: philosophical doctrine. Conservative doctrine. Failed, discredited, immoral, racist, un-Godly conservative doctrine.
For this crew, government is bad in its essence, whilst power remains good; that’s a strange, warped view to govern under, but it’s what we now have at the helm of the United States. This government did not act because under its philosophy government should not act. Government does best when it stays out of the way, and lets folks just be folks. Caveat: except in oil-rich foreign lands….
Read it in full.
In his second “Conservatism Fails” post, he explores the theme a bit more, focusing on all the PR, rev-up-the-echo-chamber efforts (Bush’s photo op with frustrated firefighters who would have rather been out there helping people, the huge push to press the political line blaming other branches of government while downplaying the federal life-costing bungling). A small part of that:
To be sure, there are a lot of failing grades on the Katrina report card. As despicable as Karl Rove’s Fox-backed campaign to “blame the local officials” is there is some hard truth in the charges. Clearly, New Orleans was not a well-run city; its corruption and planning problems are well-known. Governors in both Mississippi and Louisiana will, I think, be found lacking in the long run. Many people failed.
But in a multi-state attack by nature upon our homeland by the force of nature – unprecedented in modern times – the buck stops at the Federal government’s doorstep, a Federal government manned by appointees who are loyalists to the new conservative-religious coalition that governs our country.
A group that does not believe in government (again, except in military matters.
Again: read it in its entirety.
UPDATE: A MUST READ POST by Pieter Dorsman examines the idea of Bush as a CEO President and what the hurricane says about it. Here’s a small part of a truly thought-provoking take on Bush, his style and the natural and political storm:
George Bush despite his rumored business acumen never filled the presidential shoes as a CEO, although some media were more than happy to replicate that notion once he entered office. Sure, a chief executive delegates to his sub-ordinates and holds them accountable one way or the other, but the laid-back style, the 9 to 5 routine, the inability to talk about policy details left the impression that in actual fact Bush had comfortably retreated to his role as head of state, the distant chairman…
He looks at the style and 911 and what that did to perceptions of Bush, then writing of 911:
It obscured the fact that his management style, if there was one, was deeply flawed. The terrible weakness of his opponent and the strength of the war on terror message allowed Bush to claim a second term, but already doubts were raised – righty or wrongly – about the many mistakes made in post-war Iraq. The inability of Bush to hold his staff directly accountable deprived him of the most basic of tools any CEO needs: firing the incompetent. His loyalty is commendable, but it isn’t a trait that you would normally find among effective CEOs and certainly not among Chairmen who are increasingly held accountable by skeptic shareholders.
The Katrina debacle brought all of this into sharp focus. The White House staff was holidaying and failed to resurrect the man that can unite the nation, the de-facto head of government was away in Wyoming and the president himself failed to grasp that it was upon him to be both the Chair and the CEO at this critical juncture. Bush doesn’t have enough weight in either department to compensate for a shortcoming in the other like a Reagan or even a Clinton.
These are just a few quotes. Read the post in its entirety yourself.
UPDATE II: A personal and highly unusual take on the storm and ensuing controversy from the mysterious Ayn Clouter.
UPDATE III: But Katrina will also be remembered for another development not given a lot of publicity: an unprecedented outpouring of aid in Black America.
UPDATE IV: Rush Limbaugh says the left “celebrates” Katrina’s destruction (and, you guessed it, he manages to bring Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky into it). RUSH: Did you perhaps notice that many Republicans aren’t happy over the administration’s performance as well?
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.