Massaging Katrina
by digby
I wrote a few days ago about the “Duelling Pageants” of 9/11 and Katrina. It appears that the Bush administration is going to go into the belly of the beast on the day and try to squeeze out some good publicity from the stagnant floodwaters.
As next week’s anniversary of Hurricane Katrina triggers recollections of rooftop refugees and massive devastation along the Gulf Coast, the White House has begun a public relations blitz to counteract Democrats’ plans to use the government’s tardy response and the region’s slow recovery in the coming congressional elections.
President Bush will visit the area Monday and Tuesday, including an overnight stay in New Orleans. He probably will visit the city’s Lower 9th Ward, the heavily black area that remains mired in debris, and is expected to meet with storm victims.
The trip will force Bush to revisit sensitive racial issues that arose with the flooding of New Orleans; at that time, civil rights leaders charged that the White House was slow to respond because so many victims were black. GOP strategists acknowledged that the administration’s failure to act quickly was a significant setback in their efforts to court traditionally Democratic African American voters.
The White House announced Bush’s visit Tuesday as a phalanx of administration officials stood before reporters to argue that billions of dollars had flowed to the region and millions more was on the way. The plans for the trip were disclosed one day after Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales announced that he was sending additional lawyers and resources to the city to fight fraud and abuse.
At Tuesday’s briefing, White House aides passed out folders and fact sheets that painted a picture of aggressive recovery efforts. A packet from the Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for the levees that were breached after the storm, carried the slogan: “One Team: Relevant, Ready, Responsible, Reliable.”
Donald E. Powell, the White House official in charge of recovery plans, declared that Bush was “fulfilling his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger.”
The administration’s coordinated response is the latest example of White House officials maneuvering to cast a positive light on a campaign issue expected to hurt Republicans. Just this week, Bush acknowledged public anxiety over Katrina, along with concern about the war in Iraq and rising gasoline prices. But he defended his record and accused the Democrats of weakness, particularly on national security issues.
I suppose you could call this progress. The administration has progressed from never acknowledging they made a mistake to “acknowledging public anxiety.”
The tone of the article suggests skepticism on the part of these particular reporters, but there’s no guarantee that the white house won’t be able to pull out that old photo op magic the press won’t be compelled to portray Bush as a benevolent religious figure. They’ve had a lot of time to plan this.
The White House effort comes as the Democrats, who plan to challenge Republicans on national security in this year’s midterm election campaign, are portraying the government’s response to Katrina as evidence that Bush failed to fix inadequacies exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks.
A report being released today by top Democrats, titled “Broken Promises: The Republican Response to Katrina,” features a picture of Bush during his Sept. 15, 2005, speech in New Orleans’ Jackson Square, in which he promised to oversee “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.”
The report argues that every aspect of recovery — including housing, business loans, healthcare, education and preparedness — “suffers from a failed Republican response marked by unfulfilled promises, cronyism, waste, fraud, and abuse.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is scheduled to spend Thursday in New Orleans with fellow Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana to kick off what they call the “Hope and Recovery Tour.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco plans to arrive this weekend with about 20 other Democrats for additional events.
That’s good. But, thank goodness the visual images of the crisis speak for themselves. The ninth ward still looks like it was hit with a bunker buster.
I would really like to see Bill Clinton down there next week. This is the type of thing at which he excells:
Leaders of the recovery effort said Tuesday that although progress had been slow in some areas, Bush would be able to point to successes in some New Orleans neighborhoods, including the famed French Quarter and the Garden District. However, neither area was damaged as severely as the Lower 9th Ward. The question for White House schedulers is how much to accentuate the positives while acknowledging the negatives.
“If you go to most of the city you see enormous progress,” said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. “They are probably going to go to the Lower 9th Ward, which is very honest of them, because that’s the place you see the least progress.”
Isaacson, a New Orleans native, said he considered many of the Democrats’ critiques to be unfair. He credited the White House with safeguarding millions of dollars in grants for housing and levee reconstruction, some of which was only approved this summer amid a contentious budget debate.
“They protected that housing money and the levee money in the appropriation process when every congressman was looking at it greedily,” he said.
Good old former editor of TIME magazine Walter Isaacson, still shilling for his GOP buddies. He neglects to mention that if this is true, the whitehouse was “protecting” the housing money from its own Republicans — and they did it for purely partisan political reasons.
On Monday, Bush offered a preview of his anniversary message, contending at a news conference that despite frustrations about the slow arrival of housing funds and delays in debris removal, “the money has been appropriated, the formula is in place, and now it’s time to move forward.”
He suggested that $110 billion in federal funds had been “committed” to help the region rebuild, but confusion persisted Tuesday over what portion of that money had actually been spent.
During the White House briefing, Powell said that about $44 billion, about 40% of the total, had been distributed to hurricane victims, but suggested that state and local governments were mostly to blame for the gap.
Obviously Iraq is the primary political issue in the coming election. But the real issue, cutting across all the others, is the fact that the Republicans simply cannot handle the responsibility of government whether it’s terrorism, gas prices or a crisis in a major American city. Katrina is the most vivid image of their incompetence and lack of accountability right here in the US.
The country is going to be reminded of this lowest moment of Republican rule next week. Let’s hope the Republicans aren’t able to turn that soggy lemon into lemonade. They are absolutely terrible at governing and with Bush they have a guy who they can’t count on to react well during the crisis. But nobody manufactures a campaign photo-op better than they do.
Remarks by President Bush After Meeting With Rockey Vaccarella
Wednesday August 23, 11:39 am ETWASHINGTON, Aug. 23 /PRNewswire/ — The following are remarks by President Bush:
THE PRESIDENT: I just had coffee with Rockey Vaccarella, St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. He caught my attention because he decided to come up to Washington, D.C. and make it clear to me and others here in the government that there’s people down there still hurting in south Louisiana, and along the Gulf Coast.
And Rock is a plain-spoken guy. He’s the kind of fellow I feel comfortable talking to. I told him that I understand that there’s people down there that still need help. And I told him the federal government will work with the state and local authorities to get the help to them as quickly as possible.
MR. VACCARELLA: That’s right.
THE PRESIDENT: He met with my friend, Don Powell. Don’s job is to cut through bureaucracy. I told Rocky the first obligation of the federal government is to write a check big enough to help the people down there. And I want to thank the members of Congress of both political parties that helped us pass over $110 billion of appropriations. And that’s going to help the folks. And I told him that to the extent that there’s still bureaucratic hurdles, and the need for the federal government to help eradicate those hurdles, we want to do that.
Now, I know we’re coming up on the first-year anniversary of Katrina, and it’s a time to remember, a time to particularly remember the suffering that people went through. Rocky lost everything. He lost — he and his family had every possession they had wiped out. And it’s a time to remember that people suffer, and it’s a time to recommit ourselves to helping them. But I also want people to remember that a one-year anniversary is just that, because it’s going to require a long time to help these people rebuild.
And thank you for your spirit.
MR. VACCARELLA: Thank you, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s an amazing country, isn’t it, where —
MR. VACCARELLA: It is. You know, it’s really amazing when a small man like me from St. Bernard Parish can meet the President of the United States. The President is a people person. I knew that from the beginning. I was confident that I could meet President Bush.
And my mission was very simple. I wanted to thank President Bush for the millions of FEMA trailers that were brought down there. They gave roofs over people’s head. People had the chance to have baths, air condition. We have TV, we have toiletry, we have things that are necessities that we can live upon.
But now, I wanted to remind the President that the job’s not done, and he knows that. And I just don’t want the government and President Bush to forget about us. And I just wish the President could have another term in Washington.
So it begins.
CNN is, predictably, having an orgasm. They are down with Rocky’s lovely family in their FEMA trailer right now.
Rocky, by the way, is a very nice local Republican politician and he’s very grateful for everything the president has done — unlike some of those other “ungrateful” macaca types.
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