This cocky, sequestered president simply didn’t know what was going on as Katrina hit:
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.
His own command-structure of craven loyalty and cronies insulated him from the facts. Rumsfeld – surprise! – opposed sending troops to stop the looting. At least he’s consistent. Newsweek elaborates:
There are a number of steps Bush could have taken, short of a full-scale federal takeover, like ordering the military to take over the pitiful and (by now) largely broken emergency communications system throughout the region. But the president, who was in San Diego preparing to give a speech the next day on the war in Iraq, went to bed.
His staff was terrified of having to tell him to cut his vacation short. On Wednesday, Blanco was not permitted to get through to the president for hours. She asked for 40,000 troops. She didn’t get them. In the end, it was Nagin who laid down the law:
According to Sen. David Vitter, a Republican ally of Bush’s, the meeting came to a head when Mayor Nagin blew up during a fraught discussion of “who’s in charge?” Nagin slammed his hand down on the table and told Bush, “We just need to cut through this and do what it takes to have a more-controlled command structure. If that means federalizing it, let’s do it.”
It took a city mayor to tell the president to do his job. But Blanco balked. And Bush dithered, while more lives were lost. When you get a senior Bush aide describing the White House bunker as “strangely surreal and almost detached,” you know we have a problem. Now if only we had an Iraqi version of Nagin: someone who can tell this president a truth he doesn’t want to hear.
The Dish 