Four years after 9/11, Mother Nature managed to do what no other disaster could: Katrina eclipsed the savagery of man and, much like 25,000 people trapped in the New Orleans Superdome, exposed Bush’s presidency to the elements.
It scarcely mattered to those lost in the aftermath whether the storm’s sustained ferocity was evidence of global warming or simply freakish happenstance, the result was the same. The leveling of America’s 35th most populous city and the largest forced migration in US history sent more than oil prices spiraling upward. The nation was aware — though not, it seemed, senior bureaucrats — to the enormity of the tragedy and the paucity of adequate planning.
That combination fueled outrage, particularly in the black community, as 24/7 media coverage revealed shocking images of appalling poverty and despair, of a government too slow to act and of the ensuing horror — for want of adequate planning or assistance, hundreds died long after the winds and rains had subsided.
President Bush was himself on shaky ground. He could spin over 1,800 casualties in Iraq, even daring to cite those numbers to justify the occupation, but is less surefooted when the villain is a storm front and not a front for Osama Bin Laden.
Bush, the “compassionate conservative” president watched his job approval rating sink to 38 percent on Sept. 9. Despite three trips to New Orleans, Americans already disenchanted with Iraq are clearly fed up with his handling of Katrina.
With just over a year to go before congressional midterm elections, Bush knows that Katrina’s lingering presence could impact Republican control of the House and Senate. Bush could mitigate the damage if he were scoring major successes with his domestic and foreign policies. He’s not, and the country seems to be catching on.
His predicament is likely to worsen.
The FEMA chief’s penchant for cronyism when hiring key subordinates is understandable given the backslapping that seemed the sole requirement for his own position. Investigations of FEMA’s response, perhaps even a congressional inquiry or media expose into Brown’s hiring, will ensure that voters remember Katrina in 2006.
That’s just the most obvious of the political storms that confront Bush.
In Katrina’s wake, the bedrock of Bush’s domestic policy, support for faith-based initiatives, is receiving considerable scrutiny. On Aug. 31, FEMA’s list of charitable organizations working to provide relief included Operation Blessing, Pat (“death to Chavez”) Robertson’s charity. Such early recognition at a time when Americans were opening their hearts and wallets was a windfall for his group. Curiously, Operation Blessing is not a member of the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) that FEMA relies on to vet assistance groups.
Instead, Robertson’s $66 million enterprise built its own relationship with the federal agency in the aftermath of 9/11, this according to a spokesperson. Given Operation Blessing’s track record of quasi-legal actions, it may never have gained access to FEMA without a helpful nudge from the White House.
Part of the proceeds from Robertson’s fund raising for Rwandan refugees in 1994 went to finance shipments of diamond mining equipment. When the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs found ample evidence of Robertson’s misdeeds, the state refused to prosecute. Why? In The Nation, Max Blumenthal writes, “Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley, a Republican, intervened with his own report, agreeing that Robertson had made deceptive appeals but overruling the recommendation for his prosecution. Two years earlier, while Virginia’s investigation was gathering steam, Robertson donated $35,000 to Earley’s campaign — Earley’s largest contribution.”
How has he curried favor with Bush? Blumenthal reports, “His Regent University gave John Ashcroft a cushy professorship to cool his heels after his contentious tenure as US attorney general. And Robertson’s legal foundation, the American Center for Law and Justice, is spearheading the effort to rally right-wing Christian support for Judge John G. Roberts Jr.’s confirmation as chief justice of the Supreme Court.”
Robertson’s financial peculiarities and cozy relationship with Bush will not fundamentally weaken the Republican Party. The real danger is the long overdue rebellion of real (not neo-) conservatives (i.e. those who like balanced budgets, small government and overall fiscal sobriety).
A number of conservatives are already agitating to roll back Congressional earmarks or “pork” from recent legislation in order to fund relief and reconstruction efforts. According to Harper’s Magazine’s July “Index”, congressional special interest allotments totaled $32,700,000,000 in 2004. That’s just under half the amount Congress approved last week for Katrina relief.
Attempting to be thrifty, perhaps a move intended to curry favor with these irksome conservatives, Bush suspended the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931. The legislation guarantees local prevailing wage on government construction contracts and frustrates contractors’ efforts to exploit unskilled labor. Bush is unlikely to appreciate the irony of his action. How many times have US officials lectured their counterparts, particularly in the developing world, on worker exploitation? Adding insult to injury, an editorial in a recent New York Times pointed out that employers are not required to refund taxpayers for the savings they generate by paying substandard wages. The profits go to corporations, not the American people. Conservatives aren’t likely to applaud.
Corporate profiteering is far less troubling than Katrina’s impact on race relations. America’s image abroad, of economic powerhouse and the world’s reigning superpower, contrasts rather sharply with the grim reality of life for millions at home, particularly for blacks living in the deep South where poverty has a look (and the statistics) of the developing world. In many areas, chronic unemployment, substandard education, woeful health care and constant violence have consumed lives and short-circuited hopes for generations. That has a boomerang effect on the entire society.
Well over 70 percent of black Americans believe the government would have rushed in if the afflicted were white; 70 percent or so of white Americans don’t believe that race was a factor.
When most media outlets described the bedraggled former inhabitants of New Orleans as refugees, there were cries of racial bias. Some activists point out that if the sea of survivors had appeared to be more white than black, the media’s vocabulary and focus would have been markedly different. Undoubtedly.
The White House’s trusty stable of allies is already on the offensive. In a recent Los Angeles Times column Hoover Institute senior fellow Niall Ferguson compared liberals’ attacks on the sluggish bureaucracy with Al-Qaeda expressing joy for America’s misfortune. That’s a cheap shot, another page from the 9/11 public relations manual this one from the chapter entitled, “Project domestic enemies as allies of Al-Qaeda”. But as Bush struggles to regain his political footing, and his team attempts to manipulate Katrina as masterfully as they did 9/11, expect to see more of the same.
Americans may not be so easily fooled this time around.
