There have been any number of excellent articles published in recent days offering detailed step-by-stop reports on how the government responded to Hurricane Katrina. I’m partial to Evan Thomas’ piece in Newsweek, however, because it touches on the underlying problem that affects everything the White House does: Bush’s bubble.
When did the president realize the scope and breadth of the Katrina crisis? Was it before the storm hit, when he was briefed by the NOAA? How maybe when Gov. Blanco declared a state of emergency? Or when horrific images started appearing on national television on Monday and Tuesday of that fateful week?
No, things began to “sink in” for Bush a couple of days later when Dan Bartlett put together an easy-to-understand video montage for him on a DVD.
The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.
How this could be — how the president of the United States could have even less “situational awareness,” as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century — is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.
It’s bad enough that Bush lives in a bubble, never speaking to or hearing from anyone with whom he might disagree, but when the walls of that bubble are so impenetrable that he doesn’t even know about the devastation affecting a major American city, one has to wonder if the man is even fit for his office.
I realize that not everyone has an innate intellectual curiosity, but Newsweek noted that Bush’s exposure to the outside world mainly consists of “an hour or two of ESPN here and there.”
This isn’t funny anymore.
Bush has said that he receives regular briefings from his staff, keeping him apprised of things he needs to know. And while that is no doubt true, it’s important to realize that those same staffers have come to a revelation: they shouldn’t tell Bush things he doesn’t want to hear.
It’s a standing joke among the president’s top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. […]
Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it’s mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil’s advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn’t wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn’t act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.
Bush, in other words, has created a culture of ignorance within his White House. He doesn’t get information from independent sources, he doesn’t hear concerns from his non-sycophantic constituents, and he’s made it quite clear to his own aides that he doesn’t want to hear information that might irritate, upset, or confuse him. The bubble’s walls are high and impenetrable — protecting the simpleton inside from the burdens of reality.
And what’s more, Bush’s bubble has become so comfortable, his staff seems ready to climb in.
Late last week, Bush was, by some accounts, down and angry. But another Bush aide described the atmosphere inside the White House as “strangely surreal and almost detached.” At one meeting described by this insider, officials were oddly self-congratulatory, perhaps in an effort to buck each other up. Life inside a bunker can be strange, especially in defeat.
Tragic.