In the last post, I tried to summarize what we’ve learned this week about steps Bush took — or, in this case, didn’t take — in advance of the devastation of the Gulf Coast. Now let’s consider the president’s performance after disaster struck.
I think it’s safe to say it’s been a less-than-inspiring show of leadership thus far. Kevin Drum summarized nicely what the nation has seen.
While New Orleans was undergoing a slow motion catastrophe on Monday and Tuesday, Bush was mugging for the cameras, cutting a cake for John McCain, playing the guitar for Mark Wills, delivering an address about V-J day, and continuing with his vacation. Then, on Wednesday, when he finally got around to saying something, it turned out to be a flat, defensive, laundry list of a speech.
It’s reached the point in which the New Hampshire Union Leader, a conservative paper which has fawned over Bush for five years, lambasted the president today, saying, “A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.” Even National Review is letting Bush have it.
They’re not the only ones criticizing the federal response.
“These things need to be planned and prepared for. It just doesn’t look like it was,” said James Lee Witt, a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Bush and other top federal officials said they were on top of the situation.
You’ll forgive me if I remain skeptical.
Michael Froomkin has started to call Bush the American Nero. It sounds like as good a label as any.