Sen. John Kerry blasts the Bush administration for its failed response to Hurricane Katrina, and lays out an alternative plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast.
Sept. 19, 2005 | Thank you for your invitation to be here. It's rare for me to speak at a university like Brown. Usually I don't speak at a football factory. I want to personally thank those of you who generously lent your efforts to my campaign last year. No one showed more passion than the thousands of students from across the country who knocked on doors, wore out shoes, endured desert heat and arctic cold and probably damaged their GPAs to get out the vote. You did everything, except move to Ohio.
I also want to thank you for what the Brown community has done to help and comfort the many victims of Hurricane Katrina. This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best -- and their government at its worst.
And that's what I've come to talk with you about today. The incompetence of Katrina's response is not reserved to a hurricane. There's an enormous gap between Americans' daily expectations and government's daily performance. And the gap is growing between the enduring strength of the American people -- their values, their spirit, their imagination, their ingenuity, and their willingness to serve and sacrifice -- and the shocking weakness of the American government in contending with our country's urgent challenges. On the Gulf Coast during the last two weeks, the depth and breadth of that gap has been exposed for all to see and we have to address it now before it is obscured again by hurricane force spin and deception.
Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration. The truth is that for four and a half years, real-life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance replaced by spin, governance second place always to politics. Yes, they can run a good campaign -- I can attest to that -- but America needs more than a campaign. If 12-year-old Boy Scouts can be prepared, Americans have a right to expect the same from their 59-year-old President of the United States.
Katrina reminds us that too often the political contests of our time have been described like football games with color commentary: one team of consultants against another, red states against blue states, Democratic money against Republican money; a contest of height versus hair -- sometimes. But the truth is democracy is not a game; we are living precious time each day in a different America than the one we can inhabit if we make different choices.
Today, more than ever, when the path taken last year and four years earlier takes us into a wilderness of missed opportunities -- we need to keep defining the critical choices over and over, offering a direction not taken but still open in the future.
I know the President went on national television last week and accepted responsibility for Washington's poor response to Katrina. That's admirable. And it's a first. As they say, the first step towards recovery is to get out of denial. But don't hold your breath hoping acceptance of responsibility will become a habit for this administration. On the other hand, if they are up to another "accountability moment" they ought to start by admitting one or two of the countless mistakes in conceiving, "selling," planning and executing their war of choice in Iraq.
I obviously don't expect that to happen. And indeed, there's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences.
Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a "blame game," but as I've said, this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we've all witnessed over the last two weeks, there's another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost.
We wouldn't be hearing that sound if the people in Washington running our government had cared to listen in the past.
They didn't listen to the Army Corps of Engineers when they insisted the levees be reinforced.
They didn't listen to the countless experts who warned this exact disaster scenario would happen.
They didn't listen to years of urgent pleading by Louisianans about the consequences of wetlands erosion in the region, which exposed New Orleans and surrounding parishes to ever-greater wind damage and flooding in a hurricane.
They didn't listen when a disaster simulation just last year showed that hundreds of thousands of people would be trapped and have no way to evacuate New Orleans.
They didn't listen to those of us who have long argued that our insane dependence on oil as our principle energy source, and our refusal to invest in more efficient engines, left us one big supply disruption away from skyrocketing gas prices that would ravage family pocketbooks, stall our economy, bankrupt airlines, and leave us even more dependent on foreign countries with deep pockets of petroleum.
They didn't listen when Katrina approached the Gulf and every newspaper in America warned this could be "The Big One" that Louisianans had long dreaded. They didn't even abandon their vacations.
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn't mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they're designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right-wing ideological experiments. They're already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries -- and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
And amazingly -- or perhaps not given who we're dealing with -- this massive reconstruction project will be overseen not by a team of experienced city planners or developers, but according to the New York Times, by the Chief of Politics in the White House and Republican Party, none other than Karl Rove -- barring of course that he is indicted for "outing" an undercover CIA intelligence officer.
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job -- Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom DeLay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to "Mission Accomplished" and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration.
It has consistently squandered time, tax dollars, political capital, and even risked American lives on sideshow adventures: A war of choice in Iraq against someone who had nothing to do with 9/11; a full-scale presidential assault on Social Security when everyone knows the real crisis is in health care -- Medicare and Medicaid. And that's before you get to willful denial on global warming; avoidance on competitiveness; complicity in the loss and refusal of healthcare to millions.
Americans can and will help compensate for government's incompetence with millions of acts of individual enterprise and charity, as Katrina has shown. But that's not enough. We must ask tough questions: Will this generosity and compassion last in the absence of strong leadership? Will this Administration only ask for sacrifice in a time of crisis? Has dishonesty in politics degraded our national character to the point that we feel our dues have been paid as citizens with a one-time donation to the Red Cross?
Today, let's you and I acknowledge what's really going on in this country. The truth is that this week, as a result of Katrina, many children languishing in shelters are getting vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults are seeing a doctor after going without a checkup for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago was indifferent, and will soon be indifferent again.
For the rest of the year this nation silently tolerates the injustice of 11 million children and over 30 million adults in desperate need of healthcare. We tolerate a chasm of race and class some would rather pretend does not exist. And ironically, right in the middle of this crisis the Administration quietly admitted that since they took office, six million of our fellow citizens have fallen into poverty. That's over ten times the evacuated population of New Orleans. Their plight is no less tragic -- no less worthy of our compassion and attention. We must demand something simple and humane: healthcare for all those in need -- in all years at all times.
This is the real test of Katrina. Will we be satisfied to only do the immediate: care for the victims and rebuild the city? Or will we be inspired to tackle the incompetence that left us so unprepared, and the societal injustice that left so many of the least fortunate waiting and praying on those rooftops?
That's the unmet challenge we have to face together. Katrina is the background of a new picture we must paint of America. For five years our nation's leaders have painted a picture of America where ignoring the poor has no consequences; no nations are catching up to us; and no pensions are destroyed. Every criticism is rendered unpatriotic. And if you say "War on Terror" enough times, Katrina never happens.
Well, Katrina did happen, and it washed away that coat of paint and revealed the true canvas of America with all its imperfections. Now, we must stop this Administration from again whitewashing the true state of our challenges. We have to paint our own picture -- an honest picture with all the optimism we deserve -- one that gives people a vision where no one is excluded or ignored. Where leaders are honest about the challenges we face as a nation, and never reserve compassion only for disasters.
Rarely has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves again. On the line is a fundamental choice. A choice between a view that says "you're on your own," "go it alone," or "every man for himself." Or a different view, a different philosophy, a different conviction of governance -- a belief that says our great American challenge is one of shared endeavor and shared sacrifice.
Over the next weeks I will address some of these choices in detail -- choices about national security, the war in Iraq, making our nation more competitive and committing to energy independence. But it boils down to this. I still believe America's destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity. That's easy to dismiss by those who seem to have forgotten we can do more together than just waging war.
But for those who still believe in the great tradition of Americans doing great things together, it's time we started acting like it. We can never compete with the go-it-alone crowd in appeals to selfishness. We can't afford to be pale imitations of the other side in playing the "what's in it for me" game. Instead, it's time we put our appeals where our hearts are -- asking the American people to make our country as strong, prosperous, and big-hearted as we know we can be -- every day. It's time we framed every question -- every issue -- not in terms of what's in it for "me," but what's in it for all of us?
And when you ask that simple question -- "what's in it for all of us?" -- the direction not taken in America could not be more clear or compelling.
Instead of allowing a few oil companies to drill their way to windfall profits, it means an America that understands we can't drill our way to energy independence, we have to invent our way there together.
Instead of making a mockery of the words No Child Left Behind when China and India are graduating tens of thousands more engineers and PhDs than we are, it means an America where college education is affordable and accessible for every child willing to work for it.
Instead of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, it means an America that makes smart investments in your future like funding the science and research and development that will assure American technological leadership.
Instead of allowing lobbyists to rewrite our environmental laws, it means an America where lakes and rivers and streams are clean enough that when a family takes the kids fishing, it's actually safe to eat the fish they catch.
Instead of letting a few ideologues get in the way of progress that can make us a stronger and healthier society, it means an America where the biology students here today will do the groundbreaking stem cell research tomorrow.
And instead of stubbornly disregarding intelligence, using force prematurely and shoving our allies aside, it means an America that restores its leadership in the world. An America that meets its responsibility of creating a world where the plagues of our time and future times -- from terror to disease to poverty to weapons of mass destruction to the unknown -- are overcome by allies united in common cause, and proud to follow American leadership.
That is the direction not taken but still open to us in the future if we answer that simple question -- "what's in it for all of us?" It comes down to the fact that the job of government is to prepare for your future -- not ignore it. It should prepare to solve problems -- not create them.
This Administration and the Republicans who control Congress give in to special interests and rob future generations. Real leadership stands up to special interests and sets the course for future generations. And the fact is we do face serious challenges as a nation, and if we don't address them now, we handicap your future. My generation risks failing its obligation of assuring you inherit a safer, stronger America. To turn this around, the greatest challenges must be the starting point. I hope Katrina gives us the courage to face them and the sense of urgency to beat them.
That's why the next few months are such a critical time. You'll read about the Katrina investigations and fact-finding missions. You'll get constant updates on the progress rebuilding New Orleans and new funding for FEMA. Washington becomes a very efficient town once voters start paying attention.
But we can't let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises -- like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation -- that present the greatest threats to our nation's competitiveness and character. The effort to rebuild New Orleans cannot obscure the need to also rebuild our country.
So realistically, I'm sure you're wondering: How do I change all this? What can I do? The answer is simple: You have to make your issues the voting issues of this nation. You're not the first generation to face this challenge.
I remember when you couldn't even mention environmental issues without a snicker. But then in the '70s people got tired of seeing the Cuyahoga River catch on fire from all the chemicals. So one day millions of Americans marched. Politicians had no choice but to take notice. Twelve Congressmen were dubbed the Dirty Dozen, and soon after seven were kicked out of office. The floodgates were opened. We got the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water. We created the EPA. The quality of life improved because concerned citizens made their issues matter in elections.
You are citizens in the greatest democracy in the world. Moments like Katrina are so difficult -- so painful -- but they help you define your service to your fellow citizens. I'll never forget as a teenager standing in a field in October of 1957 watching the first man-made spacecraft streak across the night sky. The conquest, of course, was Soviet -- and while not everyone got to see the unmanned craft pass overhead at 18,000 miles per hour that night -- before long every American knew the name Sputnik. We knew we had been caught unprepared.
In the uncertain years thereafter, President Kennedy challenged Americans to act on that instinct. He said, "This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country ' the question we have to decide as Americans," he said, is "are we doing enough today?"
Today, every American knows the name Katrina -- and once again we know our government was undeniably unprepared, even as Americans have shown their willingness to sacrifice to make up for it.
But in these uncertain weeks of Katrina's aftermath, we must ask ourselves not just whether a great country can be made greater -- the sacrifice and generosity of Americans these last weeks answered that question with a resounding yes.
No, our challenge is greater -- it's to speak out so loudly that Washington has no choice but to make choices worthy of this great country -- choices worthy of the sacrifice of our neighbors in the Gulf Coast and our troops all around the world.
What's in it for all of us? Nothing less than the character of our country -- and your future.
I swear, if letting John Kerry have sex with me would rewind time and reverse the outcome of the election, I'd have signed up yesterday. And I'm a man.
But we can't let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises -- like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation -- that present the greatest threats to our nation's competitiveness and character.
I bolded innovation because that's the first I've heard someone use that word in that way - that this country is in a "crisis of innovation". Innovation could solve all those other problems. I want to see us become more creative again, and god knows scientific research hasn't fluorished under the Bush administration.
you know what I really hated.. when people attacked John Kerry for being longwinded. For Christ's sake, the man was longwinded because he was willing and interested in explaining his beliefs, reasonings, postions and decisions to the American people... not talking down to them like they were little children and asking them to trust him simply because he was (hypothetically) president. I want an intellectual, eloquent president. I want a statesman in the White House.. not some arrogant cowboy. That's why I hope John Kerry runs again in 2008.
I am still amazed that we have a president who can't even speak in complete sentences, let along write a speech with 1/100th of the passion and clarity that Kerry does. It brings back the heat of frustration that I have for my country and the choices that "we" made in 2000 and 2004. To see where we are now versus where we were a decade ago is very frustrating for me and I fear what the next 3 years will bring under this administration.
I never bought Bush's "1-800-I-am-responsible" speech beyond the fact that he is trying to save his own party's political bacon. There are alot of clever and shrewd people in this administration that have learned to take advantage of American apathy (e.g. Karl Rove) and I don't see how Bush's act of political contrition will affect them or how they do their "public service".
i like kerry. but where was this clarity and ferocity in 2004? Im sorry to say that he is just another starched-shirt and tie politician swaying with the winds of current fashionable public opinion.
The sad thing is that I think the dems (many of them... dean and edwards for example) had plenty of fire going in, but like Kerry said here, the right wing spin doctors turned the race into politics rather than about real issues... Its not easy to have a rational debate in response to chants of "flip flip! flip flop!" or "botox!" That was a sad, sad day when America turned out to be more interested in "spin mania" than in their own country's well being...
Kerry wasn't a "flip flopper" following fashionable public opinion. What he is saying right now is the same as what he said throughout his campaign, its just too bad that nobody listened, but instead listened to the media mania that was actually more interested in the politics of "red and blue" and spin than focusing on the issues or speaches. If this speach were not copied and pasted here in its entirety, most of us would have missed it... even now it is being sliced and diced and clipped and taken out of context and paraphrased and made into a synopsis by the media.
If there were no media networks, if all we had were the speaches and debates uncut, Kerry would have won. Bush won purely on spin. Bush never said one intelligent thing during his whole campaign... Any logical argument came from the spin doctors... Bush had no hope of winning on his own merit... Kerry wasn't a flip flopper. That was all just more right wing nonsense and spin, taking words here and there out of context. Bush certainly didn't win on leadership qualities or on the issues... Unless you think people voted for president based on a widespread fear of gay marriage. That would be a joke considering what was at stake in that election...
I agree w/ Suture. If Kerry hadn't let 'The Jerk' & his gang walk all over him last year, we'd have a decent president. If i could make it so that LaTorpilleRose could have sex w/ 'Jr' to reverse the outcome - I'd do it...and I'm not a liberal (but esp. not a con).
I love this speach, and I'm sure he's positioning himself for 2008. I just wish the Democratic party would adopt some of this language. This looks like it could be 'the message' for the next 3 years. The Bush administration is the 'Katrina Administration'. Say it loud.
as much as this is a beautifully empassioned speech... it's true, where was this during the election?
but on top of that, it's almost pandering to public opinion and saying to those who didn't vote for him "look at what you chose to do to america". it's a little too late for the past election and far too early for the next. people will be manipulated by politics again and so it doesn't seem appropriate at all at this time.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Republican National Committee (RNC) Press Secretary Tracey Schmitt issued the following statement on Senator John Kerry's remarks at Brown University this afternoon:
"John Kerry's attacks on President Bush's efforts to assist the victims and rebuild the Gulf Coast don't come as a surprise - - armchair quarterbacking on tough issues has never been a problem for Senator Kerry. Such tactics haven't served him well in the past and today is no exception. The American people have pulled together during a difficult time and Democrats' efforts to politicize this tragedy are unsavory at best."
So now criticizing the response to Katrina = not supporting the victims/relief effort. I guess that is the same as questioning the invasion of Iraq = not supporting the troops.
this could be a great speech if he also took the time to rip the two other incompentent idiots that helped to create this disaster, Mayor Naggin and the Governor. i am a democrat - and will likely be one til i die - but sometimes this party just can't call it the way it is ACROSS THE BOARD and it pisses me off to no end. we could do a lot better by everyone if we bitch slap our own - a little tough love - and show all that we ALL need to be accountable.
While it might be a true criticism that an empassioned speech (and platform) would have been useful last year, you have to admit that he's got even better speech fodder after recent events.
In fact, I would ask: who COULDN'T write a convincing response to the Bush administration's actions (or inaction)?
Of course, what I think bears absolutely no weight, since I'm not an American. Bush would have a hard time being more than a small town Mayor up here, I suspect. (Canada)
jchermely, you called it absolutely right. This administration will not take anything less than blind support as being a real American - you're with us or against us.
In addition though, betadinesutures, I agree with you: The (that is WE, as I am one) Dems need to seriously criticize ourselves and slap some sense - not to mention strength and desire to DO something - into ourselves.
talk about a late response..
uh, where's his 'alternative' plan for rebuilding?
i see the usual kerry platitudes, and his requisite JFK quotes, but it just comes off as a whining 'sour grapes' boilerplate diatribe.....which i admit, he excells at.
it only comes off as whining sour-grapes diatribe if you refuse to take a critical look at the administartion. the truth is he didn't say anything that is new. all those criticisms have been out there already.
the reality about this is that when kerry/edwards called the administration out on things during the campaign - like repeatedly tying iraq to al-queda - the bushies lied. and a weak press let them get away with it. now all the short-comings of this administration have been laid bare and even spine-less bone-heads like kerry can see it.
the fact is that the bush people are great at politics - sloganeering, lying, smear tactics - but they CANNOT govern. unfortunately that is what a very slight majority of this country trusted them to do. elections have consequences.
What I don't understand is how Bush/Congress have effectively blocked the resolution for an independent investigation of what went wrong. Since 9/11 we've invested billions of dollars and created vast new beauracracies(sp.?) to better prepare the homeland for disasters. The public deserves an unbiased, thorough investigation. I know why(blame) and how(majority) the republicans blocked it, but I don't understand why Americans haven't given them hell. Instead the president is going to 'see what went right and what went wrong' himself, and the republican congress will also investigate it themselves. Where is the outrage?
Someone should post the Frank Rich column from the Times...it was also a great text that laid out the BS of this administration.
Although I hate posting long texts, now that the Times is going "Select" there may not be as much opportunity for this in the future...
"Message: I Care About the Black Folks"
By FRANK RICH, NY TIMES
Published: September 18, 2005
ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.
The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.
In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.
Nor can the president's acceptance of "responsibility" for the disaster dislodge what came before. Mr. Bush didn't cough up his modified-limited mea culpa until he'd seen his whole administration flash before his eyes. His admission that some of the buck may stop with him (about a dime's worth, in Truman dollars) came two weeks after the levees burst and five years after he promised to usher in a new post-Clinton "culture of responsibility." It came only after the plan to heap all the blame on the indeed blameworthy local Democrats failed to lift Mr. Bush's own record-low poll numbers. It came only after America's highest-rated TV news anchor, Brian Williams, started talking about Katrina the way Walter Cronkite once did about Vietnam.
Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. It was particularly shameful that Laura Bush was sent among the storm's dispossessed to try to scapegoat the news media for her husband's ineptitude. When she complained of seeing "a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened," the first lady sounded just like Donald Rumsfeld shirking responsibility for the looting of Baghdad. The defense secretary, too, griped about seeing the same picture "over and over" on television (a looter with a vase) to hide the reality that the Pentagon had no plan to secure Iraq, a catastrophic failure being paid for in Iraqi and American blood to this day.
This White House doesn't hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove's Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush's first 9/11 anniversary speech to his "Top Gun" stunt to Thursday's laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)
The most odious image-mongering, however, has been Mr. Bush's repeated deployment of African-Americans as dress extras to advertise his "compassion." In 2000, the Republican convention filled the stage with break dancers and gospel singers, trying to dispel the memory of Mr. Bush's craven appearance at Bob Jones University when it forbade interracial dating. (The few blacks in the convention hall itself were positioned near celebrities so they'd show up in TV shots.) In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site had a page titled "Compassion" devoted mainly to photos of the president with black people, Colin Powell included.
But even now the administration's priority of image over substance is embedded like a cancer in the Katrina relief process. Brazenly enough, Mr. Rove has been officially put in charge of the reconstruction effort. The two top deputies at FEMA remaining after Michael Brown's departure, one of them a former local TV newsman, are not disaster relief specialists but experts in P.R., which they'd practiced as advance men for various Bush campaigns. Thus The Salt Lake Tribune discovered a week after the hurricane that some 1,000 firefighters from Utah and elsewhere were sent not to the Gulf Coast but to Atlanta, to be trained as "community relations officers for FEMA" rather than used as emergency workers to rescue the dying in New Orleans. When 50 of them were finally dispatched to Louisiana, the paper reported, their first assignment was "to stand beside President Bush" as he toured devastated areas.
The cashiering of "Brownie," whom Mr. Bush now purports to know as little as he did "Kenny Boy," changes nothing. The Knight Ridder newspapers found last week that it was the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, not Mr. Brown, who had the greater authority to order federal agencies into service without any request from state or local officials. Mr. Chertoff waited a crucial, unexplained 36 hours before declaring Katrina an "incident of national significance," the trigger needed for federal action. Like Mr. Brown, he was oblivious to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in the convention center, confessing his ignorance of conditions there to NPR on the same day that the FEMA chief famously did so to Ted Koppel. Yet Mr. Bush's "culture of responsibility" does not hold Mr. Chertoff accountable. Quite the contrary: on Thursday the president charged Homeland Security with reviewing "emergency plans in every major city in America." Mr. Chertoff will surely do a heck of a job.
WHEN there's money on the line, cronies always come first in this White House, no matter how great the human suffering. After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that, according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations, imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money sent its way for Katrina relief. Actually, you don't have to imagine: we already know some of it was immediately siphoned into no-bid contracts with a major Republican donor, the Fluor Corporation, as well as with a client of the consultant Joe Allbaugh, the Bush 2000 campaign manager who ran FEMA for this White House until Brownie, Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate, was installed in his place.
It was back in 2000 that Mr. Bush, in a debate with Al Gore, bragged about his gubernatorial prowess "on the front line of catastrophic situations," specifically citing a Texas flood, and paid the Clinton administration a rare compliment for putting a professional as effective as James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA. Exactly why Mr. Bush would staff that same agency months later with political hacks is one of many questions that must be answered by the independent investigation he and the Congressional majority are trying every which way to avoid. With or without a 9/11-style commission, the answers will come out. There are too many Americans who are angry and too many reporters who are on the case. (NBC and CNN are both opening full-time bureaus in New Orleans.) You know the world has changed when the widely despised news media have a far higher approval rating (77 percent) than the president (46 percent), as measured last week in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Like his father before him, Mr. Bush has squandered the huge store of political capital he won in a war. His Thursday-night invocation of "armies of compassion" will prove as worthless as the "thousand points of light" that the first President Bush bestowed upon the poor from on high in New Orleans (at the Superdome, during the 1988 G.O.P. convention). It will be up to other Republicans in Washington to cut through the empty words and image-mongering to demand effective action from Mr. Bush on the Gulf Coast and in Iraq, if only because their own political lives are at stake. It's up to Democrats, though they show scant signs of realizing it, to step into the vacuum and propose an alternative to a fiscally disastrous conservatism that prizes pork over compassion. If the era of Great Society big government is over, the era of big government for special interests is proving a fiasco. Especially when it's presided over by a self-styled C.E.O. with a consistent three-decade record of running private and public enterprises alike into a ditch.
What comes next? Having turned the page on Mr. Bush, the country hungers for a vision that is something other than either liberal boilerplate or Rovian stagecraft. At this point, merely plain old competence, integrity and heart might do.
JCHERMELY...
it's the same thing they did with the supposed investigation into how intelligence was used in the run-up to the attack and occupation of iraq. half the nation is brain-washed by ditto-heads like o'reilly and limbaugh - and the other half has seen that it does no good - these guys do what they want. it's the benefit of having a republican congress to bend over and take it up the a** whenevr you need them to.
there are plenty of dittoheads out there and plenty of people who would probably blame cholera and the suck-ass fourth quarter of last night's cowboys game on george w. bush if only someone gave them the chance.
we have replaced political dialogue with political expression in this country. with each side just staking a claim and lobbing diatribes at the other. and it really does no good. indeed, one might say that it does way more harm than good, since the clamor and din of the pointless back-and-forth conceals the whispers of the backrooms and boardrooms where our taxes and lives are divided and apportioned.
"the blame game" and "how many lives per gallon?" and "support our troops" and "bush is a punk-ass chump" don't mean anything to me. there's no thought, just reflex behind those soundbites on bumper stickers.
and people really are ignorant on both sides. for instance, yesterday i was listening to NPR and they had a segment about recommendations for voting reform. one of the recommendations formulated by this one commission was mandatory photo IDs for voting. jimmy carter, who co-chaired the commission, mentioned how he was opposed to the thought at first and how he only agreed to it because states were already going in that direction.
then he mentioned how it's discriminatory if states charge for those IDs. which is true.
but more than that, it's unconstitutional since it entails a de facto poll tax, which the 24th amendment to the constitution specifically outlawed. however, on an "intelligent" news source such as NPR this fact was never mentioned. never crossed anyone's mind. that amendment was intended to ensure everyone's right to vote. but it was passed more than five years ago so a lot of people can't remember.
I admire Kerry for sticking to his convictions and publicly voicing them after losing the race for the whitehouse. How many others in his situation do you hear from?
I don't think he's too late, he has always stood upon his platform of environment, innovation, healthcare, poverty... he's just reminding us.
If the right-wingers remain in control for much longer, the United States' global role is going to change dramatically. We will no longer be a superpower (watch out for china), no longer scientific leaders (india is doing stem cell research as we speak), no longer the land of plenty (skyrocketing oil prices threaten to change the economic landscape). Its really very sad.
..and set up a lot of stuff that we couldn't afford. I think Bill Clinton was the last competent president, except for that 'problem.' If big Bill could've jus held out for another 3 yrs, Gore would be president & we would be discussing stuff like increasing bandwidth & how to build solar cars. Instead we're in these endless debates abt evolution-creation, abortion & prayer in schools. it's like we now havde this need to re-open old arguments that only lead to shouting matches.
I think 'spin' is really, really bad for the country. Spin actually waters down the power of democracy. Because the best person doesn't necessarily win... I am not anti republican. I was anti bush in this election... I just wish the system really worked... resulted in the best leader-- the most competent, intelligent, leader with real integrity and values, and our country's best interest at heart.
I think you're right that both sides are full of political talk and throw expressions at each other like political "name calling". However, I don't think its that both sides don't weren't actually very clear opn their own positions, but the reality is that these soundbites are what the media latches onto and replays over and over again.
I think the Kerry/Edwards people realized a little bit too late that the real issues don't really matter in the election. No matter how much stronger your platform is, the media is more interested in ratings and simplifies everything down to red vs. blue. The truth is, during the election, the media actually intentionally or subconsciously keeps the race close. Or focuses on "how close a race it is", and even boosts up the momentary underdog team after every significant event or debate... They in a way actually encouraged the spindoctors to spin the replublicans upwards... The truth is, regardless of which leaning a particular media network has (left or right), it is always better for ratings if it is a close race. It's not so much that the kerry/edwards campaign didn't give good speaches, its that they were never really heard by the amjority of people. Kerry/Edwards had a solid platform, and they were very clear about their positions on isues and their policy. Their problem was that they: 1. didn't understand or at least didn't know how to play the media game as well as karl rove; 2. they didn't have as far reaching money, advertisements, and "ground people" in place.
Throughout the election, I watched as little of the media networks as possible. I primarily downloaded the fall length, uncut speaches and debates from www.cspan.com, in part because I was always too busy to watch them live... I think if anybody did this, they would have been a bit shocked at the election results. It just didn't make sense that bush/cheney would win... I think even the networks themselves were shocked. They contributed to the spin. They thought they kept the race just close enough to have strong ratings, and they did, but what they didn't realize was that this also has the effect of completely obscuring the issues all together. What happens is that it sort of makes the issues irrelevant, turns everything into spin headlines, and makes propaganda campaigns on the ground the decisive factor.
Just to be clear, I'm not a staunch democrat, but in this particular election, I think that political spin was totally out of control... It prevented most people from looking past red or blue trash talking and took the focus away from bush/cheney vs. kerry/edwards...
Even though I voted for Kerry and I think it's good that he voices his opinion, I can't help to feel a bit cautious about this. Dean has been more consistant in giving Bush hell. Kerry I'm sure is up to being a democrat politician doing things and taking decisions, and political stands with a careful politically correct spin. But, how can this guy be morning quarterbacking?
Kerry almost certainly won't be a player in the next presidential election. No way the democrats would play the same horse twice. I think Kerry is simply being frank in voicing his opinion. It's alot easier to be frank when you aren't the official voice and candidate of the party burdened with winning the race
All be it from a *gasp* conservitive source I think the writer makes some valid points. While everyone is running around playing the blame game I think it's only fitting that we include some points from the other side. I'm all for blaming Bush where blame is due. On the hurricane though - I find the blame square on the local politicians.
New Orleans, the tragedy
September 1st, 2005
Thomas Lifson
As Hurricane Katrina headed toward New Orleans, sticklers for the actual meaning of words told us that it would be wrong to label the impending disaster a tragedy. That term, with its origins in drama, refers to horrible consequences produced out of the flaws in human nature. A hurricane is a force of nature, and cannot by definition be “tragic†no matter how horrible the outcome.
The drama unfolding in New Orleans, however, is now officially a tragedy. Katrina wrought destruction, but the consequences most horrifying us today are the result of human folly.
For at least a decade, critics have warned that the levee system protecting New Orleans needed serious upgrading. Dire predictions of the complete destruction of the city by either a hurricane or by a historic Mississippi River flood have circulated for many years, but were insufficient to move authorities to expensive action. Holland, after a tragedy killing thousands in the 1950s, reinforced its dykes with more than the thumbs of young boys. New Orleans ignored the lessons.
The looting and apparent near-anarchy in the flooded streets have nothing to do with Mother Nature, and everything to do with human nature, unconstrained by the thin veneer of civilization.
The incomplete evacuation of citizens and warehousing in the Superdome struck me at the time as a poor choice. Why were there not sound trucks cruising the streets warning those detached from the media to run for their lives? Why weren’t there places designated where folks heading out of town could fill up their cars with refugees lacking transportation? Why wasn’t every bus, truck, and railroad freight car pressed into service to haul people away?
Blogger Ultima Thule captured my own impression of the political authorities in Louisiana when she wrote
Louisiana Governor Blanco unfortunately resembles her name -- Blanco -- she looks like a deer caught in the headlines -- oops -- I was going to type headlights -- but that was an apt slip of the fingers.
Nobody wants to kick New Orleans and Louisiana when they are so devastated. But we will be deluding ourselves and laying the foundations for future suffering, if we don’t examine the human failures which have turned a natural disaster into a tragedy.
Few if any cities have contributed more to American culture than New Orleans. Jazz, our distinctive national contribution to music, has its origins in New Orleans. So too in the realm of cuisine, New Orleans is virtually without peer. Many years ago, a wealthy and cultivated Japanese entrepreneur observed to me that New Orleans was the only city in America he had found in which rich and poor people alike understood food. He mentioned Provence in France and Tuscany in Italy as comparisons. You could walk into unimpressive restaurants in less prosperous neighborhoods in New Orleans, patronized by ordinary citizens, not free-spending tourists, and expect a meal made from fresh ingredients, flavored with interesting herbs and spices, and served to patrons who would accept no less.
But the many virtues of New Orleans are offset in part by serious flaws. The flowering of the human spirit in the realm of cultural creativity is counterbalanced by a tradition of corruption, public incompetence, and moral decay. It is no secret that New Orleans and the Great State of Louisiana have a sorry track record when it comes to political corruption. And corruption tolerated in one sphere tends to metastasize and infect other aspects of life. They don’t call it “The Big Easy†because it is simple to start a business, and easy to run one there.
Many years ago, an oilman in Houston pointed out to me that there was no inherent reason Houston should have emerged as the world capital of the petroleum business. New Orleans was already a major city with centuries of history, proximity to oil deposits, and huge transportation advantages when the Houston Ship Channel was dredged, making the then-small city of Houston into a major port. The discovery of the Humble oil field certainly helped Houston rise as an oil center, but the industry could just as easily have centered itself in New Orleans.
Today, metropolitan Houston houses roughly 4 times the population of pre-Katrina metropolitan New Orleans, despite the considerable advantage New Orleans has of capturing the shipping traffic of the Mississippi basin.
It is far from a coincidence that Houston is now absorbing refugees from New Orleans, and preparing to enroll the children of New Orleans in its own school system. Houston is a city built on the can-do spirit (space exploration, oil, medicine are shining examples of the human will to knowledge and improvement, and all have been immeasurably advanced by Houstonians). Houston officials have capably planned for their own possible severe hurricanes, and that disaster planning is now selflessly put at the disposal of their neighbors to the east.
Let us all do everything we can to ameliorate the horrendous suffering of people all over the Gulf Coast, not just in New Orleans. But we must not fail to learn necessary lessons. Hurricanes are predictable and inevitable. Their consequences can be minimized by honest and capable political leadership. It appears that New Orleans could have done much better. We would honor the suffering and deaths by insisting that any rebuilding be premised on a solid moral and political foundation.
Some Want Bush To Give Details on How U.S. Will Pay
By Shailagh Murray and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; Page A01
Congressional Republicans from across the ideological spectrum yesterday rejected the White House's open-wallet approach to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a sign that the lockstep GOP discipline that George W. Bush has enjoyed for most of his presidency is eroding on Capitol Hill.
Trying to allay mounting concerns, White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten met with Republican senators for an hour after their regular Tuesday lunch. Senators emerged to say they were annoyed by the lack of concrete ideas for paying the Hurricane Katrina bill.
"Very entertaining," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said sarcastically as he left the session. "I haven't heard any specifics from the administration."
"At least give us some idea" of how to cover the cost, said Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who is facing reelection in 2006. "We owe that to the American taxpayer."
anyway, a great speech...but if you didn't find 'spin' in that speech, you don't know what 'spin' is. 'spin' can be found in nearly every speech of a politician. (framing the argument, painting the protaganists and the antagonists, establishing a need that you promise to help fulfill - 'crisis-this, crisis-that', etc.) call anything a 'problem' and it sounds like a 'solution' is needed. Bush wants billions in aid, Kerry promises zillions & gold-plated federal government nipples so every citizen can get their daily feed and consecrate their existence.
one question - if you can't manage to win a nationwide election versus a president who'd been in office 4 years, how can you claim you would better manage that nation?
'spin' can be found in nearly every speech of a politician. (framing the argument, painting the protaganists and the antagonists, establishing a need that you promise to help fulfill - 'crisis-this, crisis-that', etc.) call anything a 'problem' and it sounds like a 'solution' is needed. Bush wants billions in aid, Kerry promises zillions & gold-plated federal government nipples so every citizen can get their daily feed and consecrate their existence.
one question - if you can't manage to win a nationwide election versus a president who'd been in office 4 years, how can you claim you would better manage that nation?I think what we're seeing is that elections have very little to do with how well you can manage a nation at all... As you say, spin is everywhere in politics... But there is a difference between spin that comes from the candidates own lips, and spin laid on after the fact by spindoctors that are all about making you win an election, regardless of your position or performance, that care more about appearances than the issues... At this point, Kerry has little to gain personally from "spinning", what would be the point? Isn't it possible that he is genuinely interested in affecting the policy of this administration?
There is a reason why they call them "spindoctors"... Because when a candidate's own position is imparied or ill, they are there to fix them up... But there is a problem if the spin becomes more important than reality, if in the face of real problems, you deny that problems exist, if spin is there as a mask, and avoid being held accountable for actions... In that case, the "spindoctor" is more like a plastic surgeon that fixes up your disfigured face after you run the bus off a cliff, rather than a phsychiatrist that gives you medication to cure your mental illness...
"one question - if you can't manage to win a nationwide election versus a president who'd been in office 4 years, how can you claim you would better manage that nation?"
because they won the election by lying, and telling half-truths, and pulling the wool over the eyes of people like you who refuse to take a critical look at anything. they put together great little soundbites and repeat them until all their partisan followers repeat them too. they smear their opponents with total fabrications. they make personal attacks instead of adressing real issues. they pander to their base no matter what it takes.
emergencies always lay bare the truth. i used to be a journalist - and it is an accepted fact in that industry that it is only when big events happen that a persons real abilities are tested. truly capable people will rise to the occasion - pretenders just can't. katrina showed bush for what he is - a pretender. he has a great campaign staff. but he is not in any way qualified to govern. look around - you are one of the last to notice it.
during the last presidential campaign factcheck.org had plenty of spin, mischaracterization, half-truths, and fabrication from both sides. spin or super-spin isn't party-specific.
while certain levels of spin are certainly unethical, some spin is always necessary in order to transcend inhumane objectivity.
so bRink, no, I'm not discounting Kerry's sincerity because his spin in this speech appears to be ethical (without fact checking it). if he's really sincere, he ought to write some legislation, give some form to his nebulous plans, and put it up to scrutiny. does he care about helping people or does he care more about him helping people?
norm, a candidate picks their own campaign staff right? if, as you say, Bush won only because of having a better campaign staff (who, you say, are experts in all manner of devilry), can we not say that Bush knows better than Kerry how to get the job done? (winning the election is a just a tad elemental to a candidate)
if the election wasn't just about who's campaign staff was better, then maybe what it was about was something much wider - a conservative counterreaction to the decades of Democrat dominance in Congress, growing political correctness, and our collective emasculation.
ah, there's the rub. all this time i thought nico was really thinking through this stuff > now we see that he's just afraid of being emasculated. he thinks all us dems are weenies (or without-weenies, not sure).
yes, bush comes off as a powerful father-ish figure. the kind who says not to do what he does but do what he says, and the kind who's right because he said so.
as far as bush knowing better how to get the job done: if choosing the team for the job was the issue, nico might be right. the guy who can choose a good team for election should be able to choose a good team for disaster recovery, right? the problem is that bush doesn't choose the team in an election, his handlers do...just like they chose him as their cheerleader/figurehead.
he probably doesn't deserve the blame in the recovery because it's this team of handlers that let him down. they didn't see what the benefits of helping in la would be to maintaining their positions of power. now they do, and they've got the machine in motion, but not without a casualty or two. bush only gets blamed because so many of us still feel like the president bears some responsibility, you know, just out of habit...
nico -
are you really judging a leader by his ability to win a campaign? this guy is incompetent and he has shown it with every single move he has made. but he can hire a good staff - so that's ok? (this of course totally ignores the more likely scenario that rove chose him - not vice-versa.) sorry - i think a country as great as this deserves a real leader - not a buffoon. i guess we'll have to agree to disagree on what makes a good president.
"Very entertaining," "I haven't heard any specifics from the administration." so mccain is spinning?
"At least give us some idea." burns [r] is spinning?
conservatives are feeling "genuine concern [which] could easily turn into frustration and anger." feeney [r] is spinning?
"Many of us think that we need to step back and look at what we're doing and reevaluate it," Voinovich said. But he added that "someone has to look at the big picture" -- and that someone should be the president. "The vision is missing." vionovich [r] is spinning?
and this is just some of what's been said publically.
Remember all those angry speeches Bob Dole and Jack Kemp delivered about Bill Clinton in 1997? Or the anti-Reagan orations of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro circa 1985? Neither do we, because they didn't happen. Last year's losers, however, lack the dignity their predecessors possessed.
"Kerry, Edwards Blast Bush Over Katrina" read an Associated Press headline yesterday, and one could be forgiven for wondering if Kedwards realize this is 2005 and not 2004. Here's a particularly rich line from the AP account:
In a blistering critique, Kerry said former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was to Hurricane Katrina "what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk intelligence'; . . . what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "
How about "what John Kerry is to 'bring it on' "? Really, this is about as "blistering" as a glass of warm milk. Another AP story, meanwhile, reports that "Edwards is calling for a return of depression era job programs to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast."
Remember how when they were running for president, Kedwards argued that their plan would better prepare the nation for a natural disaster? Remember how Edwards, during his six years in the Senate, repeatedly introduced legislation reviving Depression-era job programs? Neither do we, because it didn't happen. Or maybe it did happen, but they certainly didn't emphasize it in their campaign, which centered on other issues:
John Kerry served in Vietnam.
Vietnam veterans are liars.
The war in Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," and Kedwards were right to vote for it.
"Dick Cheney's daughter . . . is a lesbian."
This was the case for Kedwards. Amazingly, it was enough to attract more than 30 million votes, but they still lost--and they are evidently having great difficulty accepting that reality.
Do Kedwards--and, for that matter, much of the rest of today's Democratic Party--remind anyone else of a jilted boyfriend stalking his ex? (The ex, in this analogy, being the United States of America.) He hears that she is having a rough time with her new beau, so he seizes the opportunity to win her back, by badmouthing the beau and trumpeting his own virtues: How could she prefer him, I'm such a nice guy! But of course he isn't acting nice at all; his behavior is annoying, creepy, even menacing. Anyway, even if things don't work out with the new beau, there's no way she's going back to the ex, whom she ditched months ago for reasons that remain as sound as ever.
When you think about it this way, you realize why hate-harpy Cindy Sheehan is the perfect symbol of today's Democratic left. She spent the month of August literally stalking the president, and her various rantings on far-left Web sites reflect the same sort of narcissism and delusion that characterize someone in the grips of a romantic obsession.
Then again, Sheehan actually did lose someone she loved, whereas Kedwards only lost an election. They should follow the example of Mondale and Dole and take it like a man: get over it, move on and stop bothering the country that rejected them.
shameless, secretingredient. the author of this piece is absolutely pathetic, digging at the bottom of the barrel, to answer kerry's speech with 'but he didn't campaign on natural disaster protection', as if that should have been a campaign issue.
kerry didn't inititate homeland security, didn't strut around like a hero for his response to 9/11, didn't try to coax us into believing we were safer because of his policies...we have no expectations of kerry because he wasn't elected to be president. bush was elected, so we have the right to expect him to perform, especially relative to these themes/terms that he has put in place.
to the extent that kerry can still be a voice for a lot of the american people, i.e., i can read his speech and agree wholeheartedly and be glad that he said these things, he has every right to speak out. mondale and dole and gore kind of disappeared. i'm glad kerry hasn't.
Kerry's speech: "A betrayal of trust and abuse of power"
From the News, in case you don't do Salon...
Sen. John Kerry blasts the Bush administration for its failed response to Hurricane Katrina, and lays out an alternative plan for rebuilding the Gulf Coast.
Sept. 19, 2005 | Thank you for your invitation to be here. It's rare for me to speak at a university like Brown. Usually I don't speak at a football factory. I want to personally thank those of you who generously lent your efforts to my campaign last year. No one showed more passion than the thousands of students from across the country who knocked on doors, wore out shoes, endured desert heat and arctic cold and probably damaged their GPAs to get out the vote. You did everything, except move to Ohio.
I also want to thank you for what the Brown community has done to help and comfort the many victims of Hurricane Katrina. This horrifying disaster has shown Americans at their best -- and their government at its worst.
And that's what I've come to talk with you about today. The incompetence of Katrina's response is not reserved to a hurricane. There's an enormous gap between Americans' daily expectations and government's daily performance. And the gap is growing between the enduring strength of the American people -- their values, their spirit, their imagination, their ingenuity, and their willingness to serve and sacrifice -- and the shocking weakness of the American government in contending with our country's urgent challenges. On the Gulf Coast during the last two weeks, the depth and breadth of that gap has been exposed for all to see and we have to address it now before it is obscured again by hurricane force spin and deception.
Katrina stripped away any image of competence and exposed to all the true heart and nature of this administration. The truth is that for four and a half years, real-life choices have been replaced by ideological agenda, substance replaced by spin, governance second place always to politics. Yes, they can run a good campaign -- I can attest to that -- but America needs more than a campaign. If 12-year-old Boy Scouts can be prepared, Americans have a right to expect the same from their 59-year-old President of the United States.
Katrina reminds us that too often the political contests of our time have been described like football games with color commentary: one team of consultants against another, red states against blue states, Democratic money against Republican money; a contest of height versus hair -- sometimes. But the truth is democracy is not a game; we are living precious time each day in a different America than the one we can inhabit if we make different choices.
Today, more than ever, when the path taken last year and four years earlier takes us into a wilderness of missed opportunities -- we need to keep defining the critical choices over and over, offering a direction not taken but still open in the future.
I know the President went on national television last week and accepted responsibility for Washington's poor response to Katrina. That's admirable. And it's a first. As they say, the first step towards recovery is to get out of denial. But don't hold your breath hoping acceptance of responsibility will become a habit for this administration. On the other hand, if they are up to another "accountability moment" they ought to start by admitting one or two of the countless mistakes in conceiving, "selling," planning and executing their war of choice in Iraq.
I obviously don't expect that to happen. And indeed, there's every reason to believe the President finally acted on Katrina and admitted a mistake only because he was held accountable by the press, cornered by events, and compelled by the outrage of the American people, who with their own eyes could see a failure of leadership and its consequences.
Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That's our job -- to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a "blame game," but as I've said, this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.
This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people's government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we've all witnessed over the last two weeks, there's another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost.
We wouldn't be hearing that sound if the people in Washington running our government had cared to listen in the past.
They didn't listen to the Army Corps of Engineers when they insisted the levees be reinforced.
They didn't listen to the countless experts who warned this exact disaster scenario would happen.
They didn't listen to years of urgent pleading by Louisianans about the consequences of wetlands erosion in the region, which exposed New Orleans and surrounding parishes to ever-greater wind damage and flooding in a hurricane.
They didn't listen when a disaster simulation just last year showed that hundreds of thousands of people would be trapped and have no way to evacuate New Orleans.
They didn't listen to those of us who have long argued that our insane dependence on oil as our principle energy source, and our refusal to invest in more efficient engines, left us one big supply disruption away from skyrocketing gas prices that would ravage family pocketbooks, stall our economy, bankrupt airlines, and leave us even more dependent on foreign countries with deep pockets of petroleum.
They didn't listen when Katrina approached the Gulf and every newspaper in America warned this could be "The Big One" that Louisianans had long dreaded. They didn't even abandon their vacations.
And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn't mean they are suddenly listening. It's still politics as usual. The plan they're designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right-wing ideological experiments. They're already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries -- and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
The administration is recycling all their failed policies and shipping them to Louisiana. After four years of ideological excess, these Washington Republicans have a bad hangover -- and they can't think of anything to offer the Gulf Coast but the hair of the dog that bit them.
And amazingly -- or perhaps not given who we're dealing with -- this massive reconstruction project will be overseen not by a team of experienced city planners or developers, but according to the New York Times, by the Chief of Politics in the White House and Republican Party, none other than Karl Rove -- barring of course that he is indicted for "outing" an undercover CIA intelligence officer.
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn't do. Michael Brown -- or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job -- Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom DeLay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to "Mission Accomplished" and "Wanted Dead or Alive." The bottom line is simple: The "we'll do whatever it takes" administration doesn't have what it takes to get the job done.
This is the Katrina administration.
It has consistently squandered time, tax dollars, political capital, and even risked American lives on sideshow adventures: A war of choice in Iraq against someone who had nothing to do with 9/11; a full-scale presidential assault on Social Security when everyone knows the real crisis is in health care -- Medicare and Medicaid. And that's before you get to willful denial on global warming; avoidance on competitiveness; complicity in the loss and refusal of healthcare to millions.
Americans can and will help compensate for government's incompetence with millions of acts of individual enterprise and charity, as Katrina has shown. But that's not enough. We must ask tough questions: Will this generosity and compassion last in the absence of strong leadership? Will this Administration only ask for sacrifice in a time of crisis? Has dishonesty in politics degraded our national character to the point that we feel our dues have been paid as citizens with a one-time donation to the Red Cross?
Today, let's you and I acknowledge what's really going on in this country. The truth is that this week, as a result of Katrina, many children languishing in shelters are getting vaccinations for the first time. Thousands of adults are seeing a doctor after going without a checkup for years. Illnesses lingering long before Katrina will be treated by a healthcare system that just weeks ago was indifferent, and will soon be indifferent again.
For the rest of the year this nation silently tolerates the injustice of 11 million children and over 30 million adults in desperate need of healthcare. We tolerate a chasm of race and class some would rather pretend does not exist. And ironically, right in the middle of this crisis the Administration quietly admitted that since they took office, six million of our fellow citizens have fallen into poverty. That's over ten times the evacuated population of New Orleans. Their plight is no less tragic -- no less worthy of our compassion and attention. We must demand something simple and humane: healthcare for all those in need -- in all years at all times.
This is the real test of Katrina. Will we be satisfied to only do the immediate: care for the victims and rebuild the city? Or will we be inspired to tackle the incompetence that left us so unprepared, and the societal injustice that left so many of the least fortunate waiting and praying on those rooftops?
That's the unmet challenge we have to face together. Katrina is the background of a new picture we must paint of America. For five years our nation's leaders have painted a picture of America where ignoring the poor has no consequences; no nations are catching up to us; and no pensions are destroyed. Every criticism is rendered unpatriotic. And if you say "War on Terror" enough times, Katrina never happens.
Well, Katrina did happen, and it washed away that coat of paint and revealed the true canvas of America with all its imperfections. Now, we must stop this Administration from again whitewashing the true state of our challenges. We have to paint our own picture -- an honest picture with all the optimism we deserve -- one that gives people a vision where no one is excluded or ignored. Where leaders are honest about the challenges we face as a nation, and never reserve compassion only for disasters.
Rarely has there been a moment more urgent for Americans to step up and define ourselves again. On the line is a fundamental choice. A choice between a view that says "you're on your own," "go it alone," or "every man for himself." Or a different view, a different philosophy, a different conviction of governance -- a belief that says our great American challenge is one of shared endeavor and shared sacrifice.
Over the next weeks I will address some of these choices in detail -- choices about national security, the war in Iraq, making our nation more competitive and committing to energy independence. But it boils down to this. I still believe America's destiny is to become a living testament to what free human beings can accomplish by acting in unity. That's easy to dismiss by those who seem to have forgotten we can do more together than just waging war.
But for those who still believe in the great tradition of Americans doing great things together, it's time we started acting like it. We can never compete with the go-it-alone crowd in appeals to selfishness. We can't afford to be pale imitations of the other side in playing the "what's in it for me" game. Instead, it's time we put our appeals where our hearts are -- asking the American people to make our country as strong, prosperous, and big-hearted as we know we can be -- every day. It's time we framed every question -- every issue -- not in terms of what's in it for "me," but what's in it for all of us?
And when you ask that simple question -- "what's in it for all of us?" -- the direction not taken in America could not be more clear or compelling.
Instead of allowing a few oil companies to drill their way to windfall profits, it means an America that understands we can't drill our way to energy independence, we have to invent our way there together.
Instead of making a mockery of the words No Child Left Behind when China and India are graduating tens of thousands more engineers and PhDs than we are, it means an America where college education is affordable and accessible for every child willing to work for it.
Instead of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, it means an America that makes smart investments in your future like funding the science and research and development that will assure American technological leadership.
Instead of allowing lobbyists to rewrite our environmental laws, it means an America where lakes and rivers and streams are clean enough that when a family takes the kids fishing, it's actually safe to eat the fish they catch.
Instead of letting a few ideologues get in the way of progress that can make us a stronger and healthier society, it means an America where the biology students here today will do the groundbreaking stem cell research tomorrow.
And instead of stubbornly disregarding intelligence, using force prematurely and shoving our allies aside, it means an America that restores its leadership in the world. An America that meets its responsibility of creating a world where the plagues of our time and future times -- from terror to disease to poverty to weapons of mass destruction to the unknown -- are overcome by allies united in common cause, and proud to follow American leadership.
That is the direction not taken but still open to us in the future if we answer that simple question -- "what's in it for all of us?" It comes down to the fact that the job of government is to prepare for your future -- not ignore it. It should prepare to solve problems -- not create them.
This Administration and the Republicans who control Congress give in to special interests and rob future generations. Real leadership stands up to special interests and sets the course for future generations. And the fact is we do face serious challenges as a nation, and if we don't address them now, we handicap your future. My generation risks failing its obligation of assuring you inherit a safer, stronger America. To turn this around, the greatest challenges must be the starting point. I hope Katrina gives us the courage to face them and the sense of urgency to beat them.
That's why the next few months are such a critical time. You'll read about the Katrina investigations and fact-finding missions. You'll get constant updates on the progress rebuilding New Orleans and new funding for FEMA. Washington becomes a very efficient town once voters start paying attention.
But we can't let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises -- like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation -- that present the greatest threats to our nation's competitiveness and character. The effort to rebuild New Orleans cannot obscure the need to also rebuild our country.
So realistically, I'm sure you're wondering: How do I change all this? What can I do? The answer is simple: You have to make your issues the voting issues of this nation. You're not the first generation to face this challenge.
I remember when you couldn't even mention environmental issues without a snicker. But then in the '70s people got tired of seeing the Cuyahoga River catch on fire from all the chemicals. So one day millions of Americans marched. Politicians had no choice but to take notice. Twelve Congressmen were dubbed the Dirty Dozen, and soon after seven were kicked out of office. The floodgates were opened. We got the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water. We created the EPA. The quality of life improved because concerned citizens made their issues matter in elections.
You are citizens in the greatest democracy in the world. Moments like Katrina are so difficult -- so painful -- but they help you define your service to your fellow citizens. I'll never forget as a teenager standing in a field in October of 1957 watching the first man-made spacecraft streak across the night sky. The conquest, of course, was Soviet -- and while not everyone got to see the unmanned craft pass overhead at 18,000 miles per hour that night -- before long every American knew the name Sputnik. We knew we had been caught unprepared.
In the uncertain years thereafter, President Kennedy challenged Americans to act on that instinct. He said, "This is a great country, but I think it could be a greater country ' the question we have to decide as Americans," he said, is "are we doing enough today?"
Today, every American knows the name Katrina -- and once again we know our government was undeniably unprepared, even as Americans have shown their willingness to sacrifice to make up for it.
But in these uncertain weeks of Katrina's aftermath, we must ask ourselves not just whether a great country can be made greater -- the sacrifice and generosity of Americans these last weeks answered that question with a resounding yes.
No, our challenge is greater -- it's to speak out so loudly that Washington has no choice but to make choices worthy of this great country -- choices worthy of the sacrifice of our neighbors in the Gulf Coast and our troops all around the world.
What's in it for all of us? Nothing less than the character of our country -- and your future.
Beautiful.
I swear, if letting John Kerry have sex with me would rewind time and reverse the outcome of the election, I'd have signed up yesterday. And I'm a man.
LaTorpilleRose, you are too much. YOU ROCK!
Bryan, thank you for posting this!
This is my favorite part:
But we can't let political maneuvering around the current crisis distract people from the gathering, hidden crises -- like energy, environment, poverty, healthcare and innovation -- that present the greatest threats to our nation's competitiveness and character.
I bolded innovation because that's the first I've heard someone use that word in that way - that this country is in a "crisis of innovation". Innovation could solve all those other problems. I want to see us become more creative again, and god knows scientific research hasn't fluorished under the Bush administration.
you know what I really hated.. when people attacked John Kerry for being longwinded. For Christ's sake, the man was longwinded because he was willing and interested in explaining his beliefs, reasonings, postions and decisions to the American people... not talking down to them like they were little children and asking them to trust him simply because he was (hypothetically) president. I want an intellectual, eloquent president. I want a statesman in the White House.. not some arrogant cowboy. That's why I hope John Kerry runs again in 2008.
I also think it is a great speech.
I am still amazed that we have a president who can't even speak in complete sentences, let along write a speech with 1/100th of the passion and clarity that Kerry does. It brings back the heat of frustration that I have for my country and the choices that "we" made in 2000 and 2004. To see where we are now versus where we were a decade ago is very frustrating for me and I fear what the next 3 years will bring under this administration.
I never bought Bush's "1-800-I-am-responsible" speech beyond the fact that he is trying to save his own party's political bacon. There are alot of clever and shrewd people in this administration that have learned to take advantage of American apathy (e.g. Karl Rove) and I don't see how Bush's act of political contrition will affect them or how they do their "public service".
i like kerry. but where was this clarity and ferocity in 2004? Im sorry to say that he is just another starched-shirt and tie politician swaying with the winds of current fashionable public opinion.
He is about a year too late on the attack.
The sad thing is that I think the dems (many of them... dean and edwards for example) had plenty of fire going in, but like Kerry said here, the right wing spin doctors turned the race into politics rather than about real issues... Its not easy to have a rational debate in response to chants of "flip flip! flip flop!" or "botox!" That was a sad, sad day when America turned out to be more interested in "spin mania" than in their own country's well being...
Kerry wasn't a "flip flopper" following fashionable public opinion. What he is saying right now is the same as what he said throughout his campaign, its just too bad that nobody listened, but instead listened to the media mania that was actually more interested in the politics of "red and blue" and spin than focusing on the issues or speaches. If this speach were not copied and pasted here in its entirety, most of us would have missed it... even now it is being sliced and diced and clipped and taken out of context and paraphrased and made into a synopsis by the media.
If there were no media networks, if all we had were the speaches and debates uncut, Kerry would have won. Bush won purely on spin. Bush never said one intelligent thing during his whole campaign... Any logical argument came from the spin doctors... Bush had no hope of winning on his own merit... Kerry wasn't a flip flopper. That was all just more right wing nonsense and spin, taking words here and there out of context. Bush certainly didn't win on leadership qualities or on the issues... Unless you think people voted for president based on a widespread fear of gay marriage. That would be a joke considering what was at stake in that election...
But no point in looking to the past now...
I agree w/ Suture. If Kerry hadn't let 'The Jerk' & his gang walk all over him last year, we'd have a decent president. If i could make it so that LaTorpilleRose could have sex w/ 'Jr' to reverse the outcome - I'd do it...and I'm not a liberal (but esp. not a con).
I love this speach, and I'm sure he's positioning himself for 2008. I just wish the Democratic party would adopt some of this language. This looks like it could be 'the message' for the next 3 years. The Bush administration is the 'Katrina Administration'. Say it loud.
as much as this is a beautifully empassioned speech... it's true, where was this during the election?
but on top of that, it's almost pandering to public opinion and saying to those who didn't vote for him "look at what you chose to do to america". it's a little too late for the past election and far too early for the next. people will be manipulated by politics again and so it doesn't seem appropriate at all at this time.
RNC Statement in Response to John Kerry's Attacks on President Bush
9/19/2005 4:27:00 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: National Desk, Political Reporter
Contact: RNC Press Office, 202-863-8614
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Republican National Committee (RNC) Press Secretary Tracey Schmitt issued the following statement on Senator John Kerry's remarks at Brown University this afternoon:
"John Kerry's attacks on President Bush's efforts to assist the victims and rebuild the Gulf Coast don't come as a surprise - - armchair quarterbacking on tough issues has never been a problem for Senator Kerry. Such tactics haven't served him well in the past and today is no exception. The American people have pulled together during a difficult time and Democrats' efforts to politicize this tragedy are unsavory at best."
So now criticizing the response to Katrina = not supporting the victims/relief effort. I guess that is the same as questioning the invasion of Iraq = not supporting the troops.
jchermely - not only are you right regarding the rnc strategy > it will work. it IS a brilliant speech, though...
this could be a great speech if he also took the time to rip the two other incompentent idiots that helped to create this disaster, Mayor Naggin and the Governor. i am a democrat - and will likely be one til i die - but sometimes this party just can't call it the way it is ACROSS THE BOARD and it pisses me off to no end. we could do a lot better by everyone if we bitch slap our own - a little tough love - and show all that we ALL need to be accountable.
While it might be a true criticism that an empassioned speech (and platform) would have been useful last year, you have to admit that he's got even better speech fodder after recent events.
In fact, I would ask: who COULDN'T write a convincing response to the Bush administration's actions (or inaction)?
Of course, what I think bears absolutely no weight, since I'm not an American. Bush would have a hard time being more than a small town Mayor up here, I suspect. (Canada)
yes, but up here in good ol' canada we hate all our politicians equally.
jchermely, you called it absolutely right. This administration will not take anything less than blind support as being a real American - you're with us or against us.
In addition though, betadinesutures, I agree with you: The (that is WE, as I am one) Dems need to seriously criticize ourselves and slap some sense - not to mention strength and desire to DO something - into ourselves.
talk about a late response..
uh, where's his 'alternative' plan for rebuilding?
i see the usual kerry platitudes, and his requisite JFK quotes, but it just comes off as a whining 'sour grapes' boilerplate diatribe.....which i admit, he excells at.
sounds like he's campaigning again.
it only comes off as whining sour-grapes diatribe if you refuse to take a critical look at the administartion. the truth is he didn't say anything that is new. all those criticisms have been out there already.
the reality about this is that when kerry/edwards called the administration out on things during the campaign - like repeatedly tying iraq to al-queda - the bushies lied. and a weak press let them get away with it. now all the short-comings of this administration have been laid bare and even spine-less bone-heads like kerry can see it.
the fact is that the bush people are great at politics - sloganeering, lying, smear tactics - but they CANNOT govern. unfortunately that is what a very slight majority of this country trusted them to do. elections have consequences.
What I don't understand is how Bush/Congress have effectively blocked the resolution for an independent investigation of what went wrong. Since 9/11 we've invested billions of dollars and created vast new beauracracies(sp.?) to better prepare the homeland for disasters. The public deserves an unbiased, thorough investigation. I know why(blame) and how(majority) the republicans blocked it, but I don't understand why Americans haven't given them hell. Instead the president is going to 'see what went right and what went wrong' himself, and the republican congress will also investigate it themselves. Where is the outrage?
Someone should post the Frank Rich column from the Times...it was also a great text that laid out the BS of this administration.
Although I hate posting long texts, now that the Times is going "Select" there may not be as much opportunity for this in the future...
"Message: I Care About the Black Folks"
By FRANK RICH, NY TIMES
Published: September 18, 2005
ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.
The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.
In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.
Nor can the president's acceptance of "responsibility" for the disaster dislodge what came before. Mr. Bush didn't cough up his modified-limited mea culpa until he'd seen his whole administration flash before his eyes. His admission that some of the buck may stop with him (about a dime's worth, in Truman dollars) came two weeks after the levees burst and five years after he promised to usher in a new post-Clinton "culture of responsibility." It came only after the plan to heap all the blame on the indeed blameworthy local Democrats failed to lift Mr. Bush's own record-low poll numbers. It came only after America's highest-rated TV news anchor, Brian Williams, started talking about Katrina the way Walter Cronkite once did about Vietnam.
Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. It was particularly shameful that Laura Bush was sent among the storm's dispossessed to try to scapegoat the news media for her husband's ineptitude. When she complained of seeing "a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened," the first lady sounded just like Donald Rumsfeld shirking responsibility for the looting of Baghdad. The defense secretary, too, griped about seeing the same picture "over and over" on television (a looter with a vase) to hide the reality that the Pentagon had no plan to secure Iraq, a catastrophic failure being paid for in Iraqi and American blood to this day.
This White House doesn't hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove's Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush's first 9/11 anniversary speech to his "Top Gun" stunt to Thursday's laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)
The most odious image-mongering, however, has been Mr. Bush's repeated deployment of African-Americans as dress extras to advertise his "compassion." In 2000, the Republican convention filled the stage with break dancers and gospel singers, trying to dispel the memory of Mr. Bush's craven appearance at Bob Jones University when it forbade interracial dating. (The few blacks in the convention hall itself were positioned near celebrities so they'd show up in TV shots.) In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site had a page titled "Compassion" devoted mainly to photos of the president with black people, Colin Powell included.
Some of these poses are re-enacted in the "Hurricane Relief" photo gallery currently on display on the White House Web site. But this time the old magic isn't working. The "compassion" photos are outweighed by the cinéma vérité of poor people screaming for their lives. The government effort to keep body recovery efforts in New Orleans as invisible as the coffins from Iraq was abandoned when challenged in court by CNN.
But even now the administration's priority of image over substance is embedded like a cancer in the Katrina relief process. Brazenly enough, Mr. Rove has been officially put in charge of the reconstruction effort. The two top deputies at FEMA remaining after Michael Brown's departure, one of them a former local TV newsman, are not disaster relief specialists but experts in P.R., which they'd practiced as advance men for various Bush campaigns. Thus The Salt Lake Tribune discovered a week after the hurricane that some 1,000 firefighters from Utah and elsewhere were sent not to the Gulf Coast but to Atlanta, to be trained as "community relations officers for FEMA" rather than used as emergency workers to rescue the dying in New Orleans. When 50 of them were finally dispatched to Louisiana, the paper reported, their first assignment was "to stand beside President Bush" as he toured devastated areas.
The cashiering of "Brownie," whom Mr. Bush now purports to know as little as he did "Kenny Boy," changes nothing. The Knight Ridder newspapers found last week that it was the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, not Mr. Brown, who had the greater authority to order federal agencies into service without any request from state or local officials. Mr. Chertoff waited a crucial, unexplained 36 hours before declaring Katrina an "incident of national significance," the trigger needed for federal action. Like Mr. Brown, he was oblivious to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in the convention center, confessing his ignorance of conditions there to NPR on the same day that the FEMA chief famously did so to Ted Koppel. Yet Mr. Bush's "culture of responsibility" does not hold Mr. Chertoff accountable. Quite the contrary: on Thursday the president charged Homeland Security with reviewing "emergency plans in every major city in America." Mr. Chertoff will surely do a heck of a job.
WHEN there's money on the line, cronies always come first in this White House, no matter how great the human suffering. After Katrina, the FEMA Web site directing charitable contributions prominently listed Operation Blessing, a Pat Robertson kitty that, according to I.R.S. documents obtained by ABC News, has given more than half of its yearly cash donations to Mr. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network. If FEMA is that cavalier about charitable donations, imagine what it's doing with the $62 billion (so far) of taxpayers' money sent its way for Katrina relief. Actually, you don't have to imagine: we already know some of it was immediately siphoned into no-bid contracts with a major Republican donor, the Fluor Corporation, as well as with a client of the consultant Joe Allbaugh, the Bush 2000 campaign manager who ran FEMA for this White House until Brownie, Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate, was installed in his place.
It was back in 2000 that Mr. Bush, in a debate with Al Gore, bragged about his gubernatorial prowess "on the front line of catastrophic situations," specifically citing a Texas flood, and paid the Clinton administration a rare compliment for putting a professional as effective as James Lee Witt in charge of FEMA. Exactly why Mr. Bush would staff that same agency months later with political hacks is one of many questions that must be answered by the independent investigation he and the Congressional majority are trying every which way to avoid. With or without a 9/11-style commission, the answers will come out. There are too many Americans who are angry and too many reporters who are on the case. (NBC and CNN are both opening full-time bureaus in New Orleans.) You know the world has changed when the widely despised news media have a far higher approval rating (77 percent) than the president (46 percent), as measured last week in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Like his father before him, Mr. Bush has squandered the huge store of political capital he won in a war. His Thursday-night invocation of "armies of compassion" will prove as worthless as the "thousand points of light" that the first President Bush bestowed upon the poor from on high in New Orleans (at the Superdome, during the 1988 G.O.P. convention). It will be up to other Republicans in Washington to cut through the empty words and image-mongering to demand effective action from Mr. Bush on the Gulf Coast and in Iraq, if only because their own political lives are at stake. It's up to Democrats, though they show scant signs of realizing it, to step into the vacuum and propose an alternative to a fiscally disastrous conservatism that prizes pork over compassion. If the era of Great Society big government is over, the era of big government for special interests is proving a fiasco. Especially when it's presided over by a self-styled C.E.O. with a consistent three-decade record of running private and public enterprises alike into a ditch.
What comes next? Having turned the page on Mr. Bush, the country hungers for a vision that is something other than either liberal boilerplate or Rovian stagecraft. At this point, merely plain old competence, integrity and heart might do.
I wish more Democrats had balls
JCHERMELY...
it's the same thing they did with the supposed investigation into how intelligence was used in the run-up to the attack and occupation of iraq. half the nation is brain-washed by ditto-heads like o'reilly and limbaugh - and the other half has seen that it does no good - these guys do what they want. it's the benefit of having a republican congress to bend over and take it up the a** whenevr you need them to.
there are plenty of dittoheads out there and plenty of people who would probably blame cholera and the suck-ass fourth quarter of last night's cowboys game on george w. bush if only someone gave them the chance.
we have replaced political dialogue with political expression in this country. with each side just staking a claim and lobbing diatribes at the other. and it really does no good. indeed, one might say that it does way more harm than good, since the clamor and din of the pointless back-and-forth conceals the whispers of the backrooms and boardrooms where our taxes and lives are divided and apportioned.
"the blame game" and "how many lives per gallon?" and "support our troops" and "bush is a punk-ass chump" don't mean anything to me. there's no thought, just reflex behind those soundbites on bumper stickers.
and people really are ignorant on both sides. for instance, yesterday i was listening to NPR and they had a segment about recommendations for voting reform. one of the recommendations formulated by this one commission was mandatory photo IDs for voting. jimmy carter, who co-chaired the commission, mentioned how he was opposed to the thought at first and how he only agreed to it because states were already going in that direction.
then he mentioned how it's discriminatory if states charge for those IDs. which is true.
but more than that, it's unconstitutional since it entails a de facto poll tax, which the 24th amendment to the constitution specifically outlawed. however, on an "intelligent" news source such as NPR this fact was never mentioned. never crossed anyone's mind. that amendment was intended to ensure everyone's right to vote. but it was passed more than five years ago so a lot of people can't remember.
You're right ochona that the constant shouting matches back and forth do nothing but mask real problems.
A quote from the Frank Rich article: At this point, merely plain old competence, integrity and heart might do.
That's it - I don't care if it's Dem or Repub, I want people of intelligence and integrity running this place, period.
damn straight. i think the last competent person we had in the white house was lyndon baines johnson -- until he f----d up vietnam.
Suture,
I admire Kerry for sticking to his convictions and publicly voicing them after losing the race for the whitehouse. How many others in his situation do you hear from?
I don't think he's too late, he has always stood upon his platform of environment, innovation, healthcare, poverty... he's just reminding us.
If the right-wingers remain in control for much longer, the United States' global role is going to change dramatically. We will no longer be a superpower (watch out for china), no longer scientific leaders (india is doing stem cell research as we speak), no longer the land of plenty (skyrocketing oil prices threaten to change the economic landscape). Its really very sad.
You forgot Jimmy Carter.
..and set up a lot of stuff that we couldn't afford. I think Bill Clinton was the last competent president, except for that 'problem.' If big Bill could've jus held out for another 3 yrs, Gore would be president & we would be discussing stuff like increasing bandwidth & how to build solar cars. Instead we're in these endless debates abt evolution-creation, abortion & prayer in schools. it's like we now havde this need to re-open old arguments that only lead to shouting matches.
I think 'spin' is really, really bad for the country. Spin actually waters down the power of democracy. Because the best person doesn't necessarily win... I am not anti republican. I was anti bush in this election... I just wish the system really worked... resulted in the best leader-- the most competent, intelligent, leader with real integrity and values, and our country's best interest at heart.
I think you're right that both sides are full of political talk and throw expressions at each other like political "name calling". However, I don't think its that both sides don't weren't actually very clear opn their own positions, but the reality is that these soundbites are what the media latches onto and replays over and over again.
I think the Kerry/Edwards people realized a little bit too late that the real issues don't really matter in the election. No matter how much stronger your platform is, the media is more interested in ratings and simplifies everything down to red vs. blue. The truth is, during the election, the media actually intentionally or subconsciously keeps the race close. Or focuses on "how close a race it is", and even boosts up the momentary underdog team after every significant event or debate... They in a way actually encouraged the spindoctors to spin the replublicans upwards... The truth is, regardless of which leaning a particular media network has (left or right), it is always better for ratings if it is a close race. It's not so much that the kerry/edwards campaign didn't give good speaches, its that they were never really heard by the amjority of people. Kerry/Edwards had a solid platform, and they were very clear about their positions on isues and their policy. Their problem was that they: 1. didn't understand or at least didn't know how to play the media game as well as karl rove; 2. they didn't have as far reaching money, advertisements, and "ground people" in place.
Throughout the election, I watched as little of the media networks as possible. I primarily downloaded the fall length, uncut speaches and debates from www.cspan.com, in part because I was always too busy to watch them live... I think if anybody did this, they would have been a bit shocked at the election results. It just didn't make sense that bush/cheney would win... I think even the networks themselves were shocked. They contributed to the spin. They thought they kept the race just close enough to have strong ratings, and they did, but what they didn't realize was that this also has the effect of completely obscuring the issues all together. What happens is that it sort of makes the issues irrelevant, turns everything into spin headlines, and makes propaganda campaigns on the ground the decisive factor.
Just to be clear, I'm not a staunch democrat, but in this particular election, I think that political spin was totally out of control... It prevented most people from looking past red or blue trash talking and took the focus away from bush/cheney vs. kerry/edwards...
oh, we can all afford head start and the voting rights act. the war on poverty turned into the war on the poor via the war on drugs.
Even though I voted for Kerry and I think it's good that he voices his opinion, I can't help to feel a bit cautious about this. Dean has been more consistant in giving Bush hell. Kerry I'm sure is up to being a democrat politician doing things and taking decisions, and political stands with a careful politically correct spin. But, how can this guy be morning quarterbacking?
i agree. but i wish some other guy had said it. someone like maybe... obama?
Kerry almost certainly won't be a player in the next presidential election. No way the democrats would play the same horse twice. I think Kerry is simply being frank in voicing his opinion. It's alot easier to be frank when you aren't the official voice and candidate of the party burdened with winning the race
Obama is too young,
cant wait till he grows up a little more
All be it from a *gasp* conservitive source I think the writer makes some valid points. While everyone is running around playing the blame game I think it's only fitting that we include some points from the other side. I'm all for blaming Bush where blame is due. On the hurricane though - I find the blame square on the local politicians.
New Orleans, the tragedy
September 1st, 2005
Thomas Lifson
As Hurricane Katrina headed toward New Orleans, sticklers for the actual meaning of words told us that it would be wrong to label the impending disaster a tragedy. That term, with its origins in drama, refers to horrible consequences produced out of the flaws in human nature. A hurricane is a force of nature, and cannot by definition be “tragic†no matter how horrible the outcome.
The drama unfolding in New Orleans, however, is now officially a tragedy. Katrina wrought destruction, but the consequences most horrifying us today are the result of human folly.
For at least a decade, critics have warned that the levee system protecting New Orleans needed serious upgrading. Dire predictions of the complete destruction of the city by either a hurricane or by a historic Mississippi River flood have circulated for many years, but were insufficient to move authorities to expensive action. Holland, after a tragedy killing thousands in the 1950s, reinforced its dykes with more than the thumbs of young boys. New Orleans ignored the lessons.
The looting and apparent near-anarchy in the flooded streets have nothing to do with Mother Nature, and everything to do with human nature, unconstrained by the thin veneer of civilization.
The incomplete evacuation of citizens and warehousing in the Superdome struck me at the time as a poor choice. Why were there not sound trucks cruising the streets warning those detached from the media to run for their lives? Why weren’t there places designated where folks heading out of town could fill up their cars with refugees lacking transportation? Why wasn’t every bus, truck, and railroad freight car pressed into service to haul people away?
Blogger Ultima Thule captured my own impression of the political authorities in Louisiana when she wrote
Louisiana Governor Blanco unfortunately resembles her name -- Blanco -- she looks like a deer caught in the headlines -- oops -- I was going to type headlights -- but that was an apt slip of the fingers.
Nobody wants to kick New Orleans and Louisiana when they are so devastated. But we will be deluding ourselves and laying the foundations for future suffering, if we don’t examine the human failures which have turned a natural disaster into a tragedy.
Few if any cities have contributed more to American culture than New Orleans. Jazz, our distinctive national contribution to music, has its origins in New Orleans. So too in the realm of cuisine, New Orleans is virtually without peer. Many years ago, a wealthy and cultivated Japanese entrepreneur observed to me that New Orleans was the only city in America he had found in which rich and poor people alike understood food. He mentioned Provence in France and Tuscany in Italy as comparisons. You could walk into unimpressive restaurants in less prosperous neighborhoods in New Orleans, patronized by ordinary citizens, not free-spending tourists, and expect a meal made from fresh ingredients, flavored with interesting herbs and spices, and served to patrons who would accept no less.
But the many virtues of New Orleans are offset in part by serious flaws. The flowering of the human spirit in the realm of cultural creativity is counterbalanced by a tradition of corruption, public incompetence, and moral decay. It is no secret that New Orleans and the Great State of Louisiana have a sorry track record when it comes to political corruption. And corruption tolerated in one sphere tends to metastasize and infect other aspects of life. They don’t call it “The Big Easy†because it is simple to start a business, and easy to run one there.
Many years ago, an oilman in Houston pointed out to me that there was no inherent reason Houston should have emerged as the world capital of the petroleum business. New Orleans was already a major city with centuries of history, proximity to oil deposits, and huge transportation advantages when the Houston Ship Channel was dredged, making the then-small city of Houston into a major port. The discovery of the Humble oil field certainly helped Houston rise as an oil center, but the industry could just as easily have centered itself in New Orleans.
When I pressed my oilman informant for the reason Houston prevailed, he gave me a look of pity for my naiveté, and said, “Corruption.†Anyone making a fortune in New Orleans based on access to any kind of public resources would find himself coping with all sorts of hands extended for palm-greasing. Permits, taxes, fees, and outright bribes would be a never-ending nightmare. Houston, in contrast, was interested in growth, jobs, prosperity, and extending a welcoming hand to newcomers. New Orleans might be a great place to spend a pleasant weekend, but Houston is the place to build a business.
Today, metropolitan Houston houses roughly 4 times the population of pre-Katrina metropolitan New Orleans, despite the considerable advantage New Orleans has of capturing the shipping traffic of the Mississippi basin.
It is far from a coincidence that Houston is now absorbing refugees from New Orleans, and preparing to enroll the children of New Orleans in its own school system. Houston is a city built on the can-do spirit (space exploration, oil, medicine are shining examples of the human will to knowledge and improvement, and all have been immeasurably advanced by Houstonians). Houston officials have capably planned for their own possible severe hurricanes, and that disaster planning is now selflessly put at the disposal of their neighbors to the east.
Let us all do everything we can to ameliorate the horrendous suffering of people all over the Gulf Coast, not just in New Orleans. But we must not fail to learn necessary lessons. Hurricanes are predictable and inevitable. Their consequences can be minimized by honest and capable political leadership. It appears that New Orleans could have done much better. We would honor the suffering and deaths by insisting that any rebuilding be premised on a solid moral and political foundation.
Thomas Lifson
Some Want Bush To Give Details on How U.S. Will Pay
By Shailagh Murray and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 21, 2005; Page A01
Congressional Republicans from across the ideological spectrum yesterday rejected the White House's open-wallet approach to rebuilding the Gulf Coast, a sign that the lockstep GOP discipline that George W. Bush has enjoyed for most of his presidency is eroding on Capitol Hill.
Trying to allay mounting concerns, White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten met with Republican senators for an hour after their regular Tuesday lunch. Senators emerged to say they were annoyed by the lack of concrete ideas for paying the Hurricane Katrina bill.
"Very entertaining," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said sarcastically as he left the session. "I haven't heard any specifics from the administration."
"At least give us some idea" of how to cover the cost, said Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), who is facing reelection in 2006. "We owe that to the American taxpayer."
he has a plan!
anyway, a great speech...but if you didn't find 'spin' in that speech, you don't know what 'spin' is. 'spin' can be found in nearly every speech of a politician. (framing the argument, painting the protaganists and the antagonists, establishing a need that you promise to help fulfill - 'crisis-this, crisis-that', etc.) call anything a 'problem' and it sounds like a 'solution' is needed. Bush wants billions in aid, Kerry promises zillions & gold-plated federal government nipples so every citizen can get their daily feed and consecrate their existence.
one question - if you can't manage to win a nationwide election versus a president who'd been in office 4 years, how can you claim you would better manage that nation?
one question - if you can't manage to win a nationwide election versus a president who'd been in office 4 years, how can you claim you would better manage that nation?I think what we're seeing is that elections have very little to do with how well you can manage a nation at all... As you say, spin is everywhere in politics... But there is a difference between spin that comes from the candidates own lips, and spin laid on after the fact by spindoctors that are all about making you win an election, regardless of your position or performance, that care more about appearances than the issues... At this point, Kerry has little to gain personally from "spinning", what would be the point? Isn't it possible that he is genuinely interested in affecting the policy of this administration?
There is a reason why they call them "spindoctors"... Because when a candidate's own position is imparied or ill, they are there to fix them up... But there is a problem if the spin becomes more important than reality, if in the face of real problems, you deny that problems exist, if spin is there as a mask, and avoid being held accountable for actions... In that case, the "spindoctor" is more like a plastic surgeon that fixes up your disfigured face after you run the bus off a cliff, rather than a phsychiatrist that gives you medication to cure your mental illness...
nico...
"one question - if you can't manage to win a nationwide election versus a president who'd been in office 4 years, how can you claim you would better manage that nation?"
because they won the election by lying, and telling half-truths, and pulling the wool over the eyes of people like you who refuse to take a critical look at anything. they put together great little soundbites and repeat them until all their partisan followers repeat them too. they smear their opponents with total fabrications. they make personal attacks instead of adressing real issues. they pander to their base no matter what it takes.
emergencies always lay bare the truth. i used to be a journalist - and it is an accepted fact in that industry that it is only when big events happen that a persons real abilities are tested. truly capable people will rise to the occasion - pretenders just can't. katrina showed bush for what he is - a pretender. he has a great campaign staff. but he is not in any way qualified to govern. look around - you are one of the last to notice it.
"Very entertaining," Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said sarcastically as he left the session. "I haven't heard any specifics from the administration."
nico, if bush has a plan right now, he's not sharing it. even with ppl in his own party.
during the last presidential campaign factcheck.org had plenty of spin, mischaracterization, half-truths, and fabrication from both sides. spin or super-spin isn't party-specific.
while certain levels of spin are certainly unethical, some spin is always necessary in order to transcend inhumane objectivity.
so bRink, no, I'm not discounting Kerry's sincerity because his spin in this speech appears to be ethical (without fact checking it). if he's really sincere, he ought to write some legislation, give some form to his nebulous plans, and put it up to scrutiny. does he care about helping people or does he care more about him helping people?
norm, a candidate picks their own campaign staff right? if, as you say, Bush won only because of having a better campaign staff (who, you say, are experts in all manner of devilry), can we not say that Bush knows better than Kerry how to get the job done? (winning the election is a just a tad elemental to a candidate)
if the election wasn't just about who's campaign staff was better, then maybe what it was about was something much wider - a conservative counterreaction to the decades of Democrat dominance in Congress, growing political correctness, and our collective emasculation.
ah, there's the rub. all this time i thought nico was really thinking through this stuff > now we see that he's just afraid of being emasculated. he thinks all us dems are weenies (or without-weenies, not sure).
yes, bush comes off as a powerful father-ish figure. the kind who says not to do what he does but do what he says, and the kind who's right because he said so.
as far as bush knowing better how to get the job done: if choosing the team for the job was the issue, nico might be right. the guy who can choose a good team for election should be able to choose a good team for disaster recovery, right? the problem is that bush doesn't choose the team in an election, his handlers do...just like they chose him as their cheerleader/figurehead.
he probably doesn't deserve the blame in the recovery because it's this team of handlers that let him down. they didn't see what the benefits of helping in la would be to maintaining their positions of power. now they do, and they've got the machine in motion, but not without a casualty or two. bush only gets blamed because so many of us still feel like the president bears some responsibility, you know, just out of habit...
nico -
are you really judging a leader by his ability to win a campaign? this guy is incompetent and he has shown it with every single move he has made. but he can hire a good staff - so that's ok? (this of course totally ignores the more likely scenario that rove chose him - not vice-versa.) sorry - i think a country as great as this deserves a real leader - not a buffoon. i guess we'll have to agree to disagree on what makes a good president.
"Very entertaining," "I haven't heard any specifics from the administration." so mccain is spinning?
"At least give us some idea." burns [r] is spinning?
conservatives are feeling "genuine concern [which] could easily turn into frustration and anger." feeney [r] is spinning?
"Many of us think that we need to step back and look at what we're doing and reevaluate it," Voinovich said. But he added that "someone has to look at the big picture" -- and that someone should be the president. "The vision is missing." vionovich [r] is spinning?
and this is just some of what's been said publically.
mccain/? 2008
vs
?/? 2008
From Opinion Journal yesterday:
Remember all those angry speeches Bob Dole and Jack Kemp delivered about Bill Clinton in 1997? Or the anti-Reagan orations of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro circa 1985? Neither do we, because they didn't happen. Last year's losers, however, lack the dignity their predecessors possessed.
"Kerry, Edwards Blast Bush Over Katrina" read an Associated Press headline yesterday, and one could be forgiven for wondering if Kedwards realize this is 2005 and not 2004. Here's a particularly rich line from the AP account:
In a blistering critique, Kerry said former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was to Hurricane Katrina "what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to 'slam dunk intelligence'; . . . what George Bush is to 'Mission Accomplished' and 'Wanted Dead or Alive.' "
How about "what John Kerry is to 'bring it on' "? Really, this is about as "blistering" as a glass of warm milk. Another AP story, meanwhile, reports that "Edwards is calling for a return of depression era job programs to rebuild the hurricane ravaged Gulf Coast."
Remember how when they were running for president, Kedwards argued that their plan would better prepare the nation for a natural disaster? Remember how Edwards, during his six years in the Senate, repeatedly introduced legislation reviving Depression-era job programs? Neither do we, because it didn't happen. Or maybe it did happen, but they certainly didn't emphasize it in their campaign, which centered on other issues:
John Kerry served in Vietnam.
Vietnam veterans are liars.
The war in Iraq was "the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time," and Kedwards were right to vote for it.
"Dick Cheney's daughter . . . is a lesbian."
This was the case for Kedwards. Amazingly, it was enough to attract more than 30 million votes, but they still lost--and they are evidently having great difficulty accepting that reality.
Do Kedwards--and, for that matter, much of the rest of today's Democratic Party--remind anyone else of a jilted boyfriend stalking his ex? (The ex, in this analogy, being the United States of America.) He hears that she is having a rough time with her new beau, so he seizes the opportunity to win her back, by badmouthing the beau and trumpeting his own virtues: How could she prefer him, I'm such a nice guy! But of course he isn't acting nice at all; his behavior is annoying, creepy, even menacing. Anyway, even if things don't work out with the new beau, there's no way she's going back to the ex, whom she ditched months ago for reasons that remain as sound as ever.
When you think about it this way, you realize why hate-harpy Cindy Sheehan is the perfect symbol of today's Democratic left. She spent the month of August literally stalking the president, and her various rantings on far-left Web sites reflect the same sort of narcissism and delusion that characterize someone in the grips of a romantic obsession.
Then again, Sheehan actually did lose someone she loved, whereas Kedwards only lost an election. They should follow the example of Mondale and Dole and take it like a man: get over it, move on and stop bothering the country that rejected them.
shameless, secretingredient. the author of this piece is absolutely pathetic, digging at the bottom of the barrel, to answer kerry's speech with 'but he didn't campaign on natural disaster protection', as if that should have been a campaign issue.
kerry didn't inititate homeland security, didn't strut around like a hero for his response to 9/11, didn't try to coax us into believing we were safer because of his policies...we have no expectations of kerry because he wasn't elected to be president. bush was elected, so we have the right to expect him to perform, especially relative to these themes/terms that he has put in place.
to the extent that kerry can still be a voice for a lot of the american people, i.e., i can read his speech and agree wholeheartedly and be glad that he said these things, he has every right to speak out. mondale and dole and gore kind of disappeared. i'm glad kerry hasn't.
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