The Dish

“Moments define a presidency. Bill Clinton did a lot of good things in his two terms, but his legacy was sealed with these eight words: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” I always assumed President Bush’s presidential legacy would turn on his post-9/11performance, regardless of the mess in Iraq, the floundering economy, and all the other warts. Now I’m starting to wonder. As New Orleans spins out of control, a righteous storm of rage and disbelief seems to be spreading across the country. If 9/11 was the president’s moment of ultimate strength, it’s beginning to look like this is his moment of ultimate impotence.”

“In the aftermath of the disaster in New Orleans, I honestly thought we would be wowed by the federal response. This seemed the perfect opportunity for the administration to showcase the training Homeland Security has coordinated over the past four years. The disaster, after all, is not so different from a terrorist attack. A dirty bomb would leave much the same refugee concerns. And while there had been much noise over the possiblity of terrorists blowing up dams, it couldn’t have escaped the authorities’ attention that someone could blow a hole in New Orleans’ levees. But I sit back now and watch the devastation escalate, and I keep asking myself: What exactly have they been doing for the past four years?” I’m asking the same question; and my anger wells up.

James Taranto is doing his usual best to defend anything the Bush administration does and points out that the deployment in Iraq is not a reason for the lack of troops to restore order in new Orleans. He cites a NRO article that makes this point:

Take the Army for example. There are 1,012,000 soldiers on active duty, in the Reserves, or in the National Guard. Of them, 261,000 are deployed overseas in 120 countries. Iraq accounts for 103,000 soldiers, or 10.2 percent of the Army.

That’s all? Yes, 10.2 percent. That datum is significant in itself, a good one to keep handy the next time someone talks about how our forces are stretched too thin, our troops are at the breaking point, and so forth. If you add in Afghanistan (15,000) and the support troops in Kuwait (10,000) you still only have 12.6 percent.

So where are the rest? 751,000 (74.2 percent) are in the U.S. About half are active duty, and half Guard and Reserve. The Guard is the real issue of course – the Left wants you to believe that the country has been denuded of its citizen soldiers, and that Louisiana has suffered inordinately because Guardsmen and women who would have been available to be mobilized by the state to stop looting and aid in reconstruction are instead risking their lives in Iraq.

But doesn’t this indict the administration more profoundly? When we desperately need more troops in Iraq, they won’t send enough. When we desperately need troops in New Orleans, they won’t send enough. Do we really have to wait three years for a president Giuliani to actually run the country?

I’ve said before that I didn’t know whether extra funding in the last few years would have made much difference, but that the Bush administration’s record was hardly a plus. Confirmation here from the Chicago Tribune.

Just asking.

Katrina did get the Bush administration to do something swiftly: push through a recess DOJ appointment of someone involved in devising the detention policies in Gitmo. When these guys want to do something, they do.

Spent the morning at the doc’s and then taping the Chris Matthews’ Show. I’m trying to think of what this event means in the national psyche. The complete collapse of effective government and of emergency procedures four years after 9/11 mean only one thing. We do not have an administration capable of running the country during the war on terror. They have bungled homeland security; they have mismanaged Iraq; they have dropped the ball in New Orleans. In each case, a conservative government does not seem to understand that law and order are always, always, the first priority. The glib self-congratulation of government official after official made me retch listening to them. Chertoff mouthed bureaucratese. Only today did the president say that the response was “not acceptable.” Notice again the distancing: you, Mr Bush, are the man responsible. It is your performance that is not acceptable. Of course, we have to live with this president for three years – and one can only tremble at the thought of what that means in the event of another terror strike. I do think however that this crisis means an obvious shift in terms of Bush’s successor. Two words: Rudy Giuliani. We need someone to do for the federal government what Rudy did for New York’s. His social liberalism will now be far less of an obstacle. We need competence again.

Jonah Goldberg, perhaps the most fair-minded of conservatives at NRO, states the obvious:

So the question is, would the money have been better spent if the Republicans hadn’t gotten their way? And, though it sickens me to say so, that is at best an open question. I have the utmost faith in the kleptocratic and dysfunctional governments of New Orleans and Louisiana to waste and steal money. But, we were supposed to be preparing –at the national level — for a major terrorist attack for the last four years. I just don’t see much evidence of that preparation… For supporters of the war, this spectacle is going to be particularly hard to accomodate because it is in the interests of the political classes to keep their pork and it is in the interests of the antiwar left to frame this as a choice between Baghdad and New Orleans. That should not be the choice. The choice should be between the highway bill, ag subsidies and the like. The Don Young Highway should at least be renamed to the “Go Suck Eggs New Orleans Highway.”

I have no confidence in this administration to deal with the kind of calamities that 9/11 proved we may have to deal with. After four years, they are still incompetent, unprepared, unable to have made the real changes that we need to have made. In the case of New Orleans, criminally negligent. People have died because of their inability to plan, to spend wisely, to set real priorities, to respond quickly. That goes for New Orleans. And it also applies to Iraq.

My apologies for light blogging today. I was traveling back to D.C. and have spent the evening trying to catch up with all the developments in the Katrina catastrophe (and write a column). More tomorrow, but for now, I have to say this seems to me to be a new situation. This has morphed from a natural disaster into a social meltdown. The Lousiana governor seems overwhelmed (Barbour seems much more effective); New Orlean’s civic authorities seem non-existent (and bear responsibility for the insufficient preparation for this potential and widely predicted nightmare); and the president’s response has been decidedly weak. His call to restrain from using gas was, well, Carteresque. It seems to me inconceivable that we cannot impose basic law and order in a major American city five days after a hurricane has hit. This is a very basic governmental responsibility and all I can say is that I see no evidence of competence or effectiveness so far. FEMA had no solid evacuation plan? The feds had no plans to maintain order in such a situation? The explosion of complete lawlessness is beginning to make Haiti look like a pleasant place to live. This is America? Where order is so distant that snipers can prevent the evacuation of a hospital? The fundamental reason for my inability to support a second Bush term was his demonstrated incompetence in performing the basic functions of government. It seems to me that the people of New Orleans are now as much a victim of this as the people of Iraq. I guess we can merely be thankful that Rumsfeld hasn’t yet appeared to say “Stuff happens.” Yes, it does. When your government seems unable to do the most basic things required of it.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.” – Jack Cafferty, CNN, as reported on Kos. (And yes, I’m largely ignoring his cheap shot. I plead guilty to not fully getting the extent of the calamity in New Orleans when it first unfurled. But trying to use it to minimize 9/11 (which was pre-meditated murder, not a natural disaster) seemed to me inappropriate then and inappropriate now. And the notion that those of us who want to defeat Islamo-fascism are just wanting to “find an enemy” is as misguided now as it was then. We never wanted to find an enemy. They found us. And they’re still at large. We can have that 9/11 debate without relating it to Katrina. Can’t we?

“‘I’m not saying it wouldn’t still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have,’ said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps’ budget.” – from the Chicago Tribune, noted by Josh Marshall.