George of the Living Dead
It would have given the evening some much-needed meaning and symbolism.
After all, Bush himself was only down there to try to extract some meager nourishment, albeit of a more refined and political sort, from the corpses, tears, and despairing filth crusting the Gulf Coast.
It would have been poetic justice if the dead could have turned the tables — and more compelling television, too.
Bush's "lead, follow, or get out of the way" moment on Katrina has long since come and gone. The speech was nakedly and uselessly about cajoling the country to feel good about George W. Bush, and nothing else.
I wonder how long the awkward and unfamiliar role of "nice, empathetic George" will endure, and the real George W. Bush, the arrogant, myopic imperial nut-twister, returns.
George hates to be a beggar, especially for approval.
If Bush has one defining characteristic, it is his scowling fury when forced to wait upon the (usually negative) judgement of his peers and betters.
His mantra is seize the moment, demand instead of ask, polarize, wedge, force the pace, make people react to him before they can respond to the situation.
A pretty necessary strategy when your ability, ideas, and energy don't impress anyone and your life arc has flatlined from lazy, drunken wastrel to mean, ignorant cocksucker.
And it's the attitude that has put America up the Euphrates without a paddle...or allies.
When Bush was young, he exploited his family's clout. When he got older, he abused the powers available to the head of the executive branch.
Katrina looks to be no different. Bush is trying to push into the driver's seat and hijack the rebuilding, despite the immense, fatal hit the bungled response to the hurricane inflicted on the twin towers of the Bush administration's credibility and the president's personal standing.
A lot has been made, rightly so, of Karl Rove's (backgrounded but unannounced) responsibility for Katrina reconstruction.
It's not just a dinner bell, signalling the connected Friends of George to line up at the Katrina trough, as they did for Iraq reconstruction.
It's a declaration to everybody that Karl Rove — skating inches ahead of an indictment for obstruction of justice and one leak away from a career-ending feeding frenzy abetted by those in the media, in his party, and in Washington who are fed up with his brutal, high-handed tactics on behalf of a despised lame-duck president — hasn't lost his mojo.
Karl wants the those who might presume to challenge or ignore his his sway to understand that, like Rasputin, he has the ear of the czar, death-defying will, and an army of billions at his back.
Actually, tens of billions...of Katrina dollars.
The prospect of that money — or even worse, denial of access to that money — is meant both to encourage Rove's narrow circle of supporters and apparatchiks, and to intimidate the Republicans who might otherwise be happy to see Rove sink beneath his self-generated storm surge of corruption and permit them to look beyond to a future that doesn't involve kissing the ass of failed president down to 40% in the polls.
So Bush wants his failure to be rewarded with more power, and hopes to use executive incompetence as a justification for decreasing his accountability. And he wants America and Congress to grant him and Karl an immense slush fund to project his dwindling clout.
It will be interesting to see if the Republican Congress, confronted by the spectacle of George W. Bush trying to throw around $200 billion just to jack up his pathetic poll numbers for the next 3 1/2 years, stops writing blank checks to FEMA and starts reasserting its prerogatives for legislation and oversight — and positions its candidates for the 2008 presidential election.
And that's why my reaction to the hostility of the so-called fiscally conservative wing of the GOP toward Katrina spending is not one of unalloyed horror.
Sure, they don't care about poor colored people. But that didn't stop the GOP paleocons from spending $200 billion to kill thousands of poor colored people in Iraq. Deep down, they don't mind spending money.
Maybe they really are concerned about "runaway" spending. After all, before the speech Don Bartlett made the round of the morning talk shows promising that the ecstatic Katrina payday would be deficit funded, thereby avoiding the dreaded letters "T" (for Taxes), "S" (for Sacrifice) and "A" (for Accountability).
But more likely the conservative heavies have decided they don't want Karl Rove and Junior telling them anymore when, where, and how long to belly up to the Katrina trough.
Anyway, the day after his speech Bush felt the jerk of a newly-shortened leash and backpedaled, saying, however implausibly, that somehow the Katrina expenditures would have to be offset by current reductions from somewhere else in the budget.
George Bush and Karl Rove knuckling under to business-as-usual Republicans is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, a war with Syria is just bubbling below the surface as Bush tries to get traction (and distraction) to attack a new Arab boogeyman and shift attention away from the failure in Iraq. Bullying Bush into political impotence might do the world and America a whole lot of good.
Maybe it's finally time for Democrats to collude with Republicans to play hardball on Katrina relief instead of blindly rushing to sign any bill with 10 (yes, 10!) zeros attached in order to demonstrate our superior compassion.
We may not be able to get an independent commission of investigation, but maybe we can get an independent, transparent reconstruction commission under Congressional oversight, instead of the blizzard of pre-approved, cronyized no-bid contracts that the executive branch is already handing out.
That might help exile George and Karl to their rightful place in the political wasteland, with the rest of the undead who have yet to learn that their days and nights to torment, terrify, and enrage the living are finally numbered.
How fitting, and how good for this country would it have been, if on Thursday night, George W. Bush had simply killed the imported klieg lights, thrown away his speech, and walked away, into the darkness, to join the ghosts, ghouls, and lost souls in the drowned city of New Orleans — hopefully, the graveyard of his disastrous presidency.
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.
