An Accountability Moment
Unfortunately, that's still 38% of the population, enough in our electorally skewed, red-state weighted scheme of things, for an incompetent, disengaged chief executive to cling to power, and for a nimble, focussed, and unscrupulous GOP to easily sustain its one-party rule.
Katrina stripped away the genteel conservative myth that the unfairness of American society was relative, rather than absolute, and that a little inequality was a small price to pay for the wonders of individual initiative and economic vitality that trickle down economics is supposed to provide.
Well, the rising tide didn't lift all boats.
Poor people didn't just endure increased inconvenience, discomfort, and humiliation that was supposed to incentivize them to struggle to afford an SUV, a hotel room in Baton Rouge, and flood insurance.
Amid degrading squalor, and as a direct result of government neglect and incompetence, the poor suffered — and died.
That's an outcome that some conservatives, eager to blame the disaster on the low moral character of the victims and the debased policies of the Democratic administrations of New Orleans and Louisiana, deem acceptable.
Thankfully, the idea of a death penalty for being poor and/or ignorant as a price of ownership in the American dream is one most Americans — aware that theirs could be the next City Left to Die after a national disaster or terrorist attack — are unwilling to pay.
With his conservative ideology that lazily conflated private greed with the public good discredited, President Bush doesn't have a lot going for him.
Certainly not that "keeping America safe" thing.
Katrina unavoidably brings to mind another disaster President Bush was unable to prevent - 9/11.
Given the tendency for disasters to cluster around Bush's vacation (I wonder if the National Weather Service could have gotten a better response out of Bush with its videoconferenced briefing to Crawford if they had titled it "Warning: Hurricane Katrina Determined to Strike Within the United States (Or Words to That Effect)", maybe Americans should pre-emptively evacuate the country whenever President Bush hits the ranch.
Now 9/11 looks less like a once-in-a-lifetime horror than merely the another instance of the collateral damage that surrounds the devastation of a Bush administration.
The Katrina response fiasco also recalls another snafu in an unhappy place very far away, also filled with what conservatives consider ungrateful and undeserving brown people. Let's call it New Orleans on the Euphrates. If our noble administration, far-seeing bureaucrats, and valiant managers and contractors on the ground could make such a hash out of a rescue effort on the Gulf Coast, maybe America really is morally culpable for the monumental cockup in Iraq.
It looks like the Bush administration is all about cronyism, graft, screwups, and coverups. Who'd a thunk it?
Finally, people are seeing a pattern of incompetence, indifference, arrogance — and an aversion to accountability.
And finally there are consequences.
I don't expect moral or legal consequences. No frogmarchings, impeachments, the wicked and powerful bending knee before the righteous wrath of an outraged people.
I don't even expect political consequences for the GOP. After all, the LA Times speculates that the dispersion of New Orleans' African American (and reliably Democratic) population throughout the country means that what remains of the Louisiana electorate will be a deeper, more reliable red.
But there will be personal consequences for Bush — from his own party.
Katrina may very well take third place in the Bush body count sweepstakes, especially since it seems that the horrible job of collecting the dead — water-bloated, alligator-mangled, shot through drainage pumps — seems unlikely to achieve the fetishistic No Body Part Left Behind extremes of the World Trade Center recovery.
Not a 9/11 (3000+), not even an Iraq (almost 2000 American lives to date). Maybe 1000+ officially for Katrina.
For our very own Dear Leader, the Master of Disaster, that would be survivable — even spinnable.
But a drumbeat of criticism stampeded Bush into making the tactically disastrous step of relieving Brown and immortalizing his own errors even before the final magnitude of the body count was known.
I, for one, was shocked when Michael Brown lost the responsibility for Katrina relief.
Not because he didn't deserve it.
Because Bush initiated the official blame-gaming by dumping Brownie.
Furthermore, Bush knows that admissions of failure legitimize second-guessing. Criticism can no longer be characterized as partisan sniping. Something went wrong, the public has a right to know, speeches are made, editorials are written, independent commissions are impaneled, axe grinding experts piss on the president's parade...
Not only that, Bush and Rove let the news out just before their favorite holiday — September 11.
Americans faced that unhappy anniversary with an acrid taste in our mouths. We realized, four years after 9/11, despite all that brave talk of defeating evil and creating a new, better world beneath the treads of our tanks in the Middle East, that we've been spinning our gears and our president was a clueless, mendacious dolt.
Most disturbingly, our president appeared to have forgotten that his one obligation to the American people: to single-mindedly spin his personal idiocy and our collective obtuseness into a vision of national grandeur.
Why not let Brownie hang on for a few more days as a symbol of that familiar heroic and unwavering Bush resolve? Most of the people killed by FEMA's negligence were dead already anyway, and the cleanup and coverup could have continued with and in spite of Brown remaining in his seat as FEMA figurehead.
Instead, Bush indelibly linked America's response to Katrina with the ugly and unedifying realities of shit, death, failure, foolishness, and inflated resumes.
But that's not necessarily bad for the GOP.
Bush's approvals were cratering even before Katrina, but decoupling from Bush on Iraq (and betraying our brave boys and girls in camo and rendering vain the sacrifice of the martyrs of 9/11...you get the picture) would have been political suicide for the elephant herd.
Now, I think that Republicans are secretly relieved that Bush's incompetence is a matter of public record, and they no longer have to engage in the politically and personally exhausting effort of covering up his lapses and propping up the increasingly ludicrous myth of his personal infallibility, invincibility, and nobility.
Let that arrogant, inept little son of a bitch in the White House and his armtwisting fat bastard sidekicks squander their reputations and political capital dealing with the consequences of their clusterfuck. Let the Bush administration twist in the wind, alone, at least for a little while, in the struggle to rescue its credibility from a newly aroused media, grandstanding Democrats, and grumbling voters.
The struggle for Karl Rove now is to convince the GOP it should stand beside that politically compromised lame duck in the White House instead of abandoning him to fight easier, more winnable, and more profitable battles against the Democrats.
In 2006, Republican Congressional candidates could be free of the burden of uncritically defending the failed Bush presidency and its odious and unpopular Iraq war. Bush, after all, has already grudgingly admitted his own imperfection. On Katrina, the GOP could savage the (Democratic) local and state governments of Louisiana — and FEMA, saying that maybe Bush Blew It, but the GOP didn't.
Probably, the GOP will turn its back on the high profile legacy-oriented heroics of the Bush agenda and focus like a laser on cashing in on its $100 billion Katrina reconstruction payday, a final fin de siecle binge that will find Republicans waking up dazed, sated, and content on November 5, 2008, no matter who wins the presidency.
Maybe the Congress will even abruptly ring down the curtain on Junior's disastrous adventure in Iraq, and bring the troops home — in time for the elections.
In a de facto one party federal government, I guess that's the maximum in accountability — and responsible policy — we can expect.
copyright 2005 Peter Lee
Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.
