Finally Fooling Most of the People None of the Time

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Finally Fooling Most of the People None of the Time

Wed, 14 Sep 2005 03:00:00 -0700

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/25412/

 

 

 

Finally Fooling Most of the People None of the Time

 

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted September 13, 2005.

 

 

 

The administration's response to Katrina has awakened the public and

the press to Bush's perpetual incompetence.

 

 

There's never a terrorist around when you need one. Even a couple of

suspicious-looking foreigners playing soccer near the Superdome as

Katrina began to make landfall might have done the trick to get this

easily distracted president focused. The war on terror is, after all,

George W. Bush's obsession, obliterating any other consideration of

the nation's well-being.

 

With a terrorist sighting, Bush likely would not have lingered on his

Crawford ranch vacation, which he interrupted only for politicking and

fundraising opportunities. Nor would Condoleezza Rice have gone shoe

shopping while the world witnessed the sorry spectacle of the Gulf

Coast in deadly disarray. And surely Donald Rumsfeld, who blithely

attended a San Diego Padres game as New Orleans was filling with

water, wouldn't have dithered for days before sending in troops to aid

desperate Americans.

 

Even if our high officials bothered to care about the poor, mostly

black victims of Katrina enough to change their schedules, the

administration would probably have bungled the relief effort anyway,

because the Federal Emergency Management Agency is now run by

political hacks appointed by Bush who know zilch about disaster relief.

 

" Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job, " the president said to Michael

Brown a few days before the FEMA chief was relieved of his oversight

of the relief efforts after massive public pressure over the agency's

response to the hurricane. Brown, who reportedly doctored his

unimpressive resume and didn't have a background in emergency

management, resigned Monday. He had secured this plum job because he

was a college buddy of his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, who managed

Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

 

During the Clinton years, FEMA was turned into a model of efficiency,

as demonstrated after the Northridge earthquake and the Oklahoma City

bombing. How bizarre, then, that in the wake of 9/11, the

administration handicapped FEMA by axing its Cabinet-level status,

turning it back into what some call a " turkey farm " for patronage jobs

and slashing its budget because, as Allbaugh complained, it had become

" an oversized entitlement program. "

 

Then there is the fact that the first-responder corps has been vastly

depleted by Bush's misadventure in Iraq. Visiting New Orleans on

Monday, Bush argued that " it is preposterous to claim that the

engagement in Iraq meant there weren't enough troops " to help with

hurricane relief. Oh yeah? Tell that to the nearly 35 percent of

Louisiana's Army and Air National Guard forces and 37 percent of

Mississippi's National Guard troops deployed abroad, mostly in Iraq.

" Had [they] been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and

capabilities could have been brought to bear, " said Army Lt. Gen. H.

Steven Blum, the National Guard Bureau's chief, referring to the

critical first hours of the disaster.

 

Unfortunately, what the Bush White House is good at when it comes to

national security is providing flash over substance, as Democratic

Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana found out the hard way. After riding

in a helicopter with the president and seeing machinery apparently

working on the breached 17th Street levee, she was shocked the next

day to find the work mysteriously stopped. " Flying over this critical

spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent

that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a

presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources

we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of

equipment, " said the senator in a press release.

 

For far too long, this kind of shenanigan worked well for Bush,

allowing him to narrowly win a second term. His administration was

asleep at the switch on 9/11 even though " the system was blinking

red, " according to the then-CIA chief. Bush grabbed a bullhorn at

ground zero and remade himself as a " war president " -- and suffered no

real political damage from the failure to either capture Osama bin

Laden or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

 

But, as one of this nation's greatest war presidents said, you cannot

fool all of the people all of the time. With the Iraq war grinding on

with no end in sight and the postmortems of the Katrina debacle

showing the White House and Homeland Security Department to have been

as confused and inept as FEMA itself, Bush's support in several

national polls has continued a steady plunge to below 40%. A Newsweek

poll found that, for the first time, less than a majority of Americans

felt Bush possesses " strong leadership qualities, " his signature claim

to fame. Boy, have they got that right.

 

Robert Scheer is the co-author of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us

About Iraq.