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Reality finally bites Bush

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published September 11, 2005

Reality has finally caught up to George W. Bush.

The bubble in which the president has been governing has finally burst, or, more aptly, has gotten so waterlogged it is too heavy to drag around.

Cindy couldn't do it, but Katrina did. Bush has been shoved awake from his long national daydream to find that, to his surprise, the country cannot be governed effectively by giving high-ranking officials cutesy nicknames and engaging in determined wishful thinking.

Welcome to the real world, Mr. President. Any ideas on what to do now?

I'm looking forward to seeing this investigation Bush intends to personally launch. But why go through the motions? Just put out the report now blaming every failure on Louisiana's Democrats.

Early on, Bush decided that his administration would adopt a "perception equals reality" approach to governance and stick to that playbook regardless of what America's lying eyes saw: a "Healthy Forests" initiative that opened federal forests to aggressive logging, a "Clear Skies" proposal that allowed more mercury emissions and air pollution from coal plants. It was an easy magician's trick, since only those pointy-headed poindexters would appreciate the implications.

But pictures of people - Americans - trapped atop flooded houses with bloated bodies floating by, while our secretary of state buys overpriced shoes on Fifth Avenue and the president stumps at a golf resort, can't be dissembled.

Remember how Bush's crew sneered at the process of understanding reality through the serious examination of known facts? How passe that all was, they said.

In 2004, journalist Ron Suskind recalled in the New York Times Magazine a conversation he had with a senior adviser to Bush in 2002. Suskind was pointedly told that guys like him were in "the reality-based community," which, the aide defined, as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."

"That's not the way the world really works anymore," the aide continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality "judiciously, as you will' we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out."

Here are some of the "realities" of Team Bush that I've been judiciously studying:

* You can go to war without raising the revenues necessary to pay for it.

* You can win a war without drafting the troops needed for battle.

* You can put political cronies in charge of key government agencies, and they will be competent.

* You can help average Americans by giving tax breaks to the richest.

* You can keep up with "the people" by allowing only those who are already on board to be part of the conversation.

* And you can protect America best by sending its National Guard to fight in Mesopotamia.

I would say these "realities" have come crashing down, proving that gravity is a reality-based law of nature.

Katrina was a perfect storm for Bush. It was a natural disaster, which meant Bush couldn't don his flight suit and shake his fists at the "instruments of evil" who seek to destroy us. His flat-footedness - similar to his confused visage after the 9/11 attacks - could not be later be wiped from the public's mind by a pervasive fear that gripped the country. And his tendency to misdirect the public with untruths didn't work, because television images of people desperately awaiting help are more convincing than Bush's declaring that FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown is doing "a heck of a job."

So good, that he's now off the job.

At the same time, the horror laid bare Bush's willingness to starve our domestic needs and divert manpower and materiel to pursuing the man who "tried to kill my dad." The storm set in stark relief Bush's lack of interest in the consequences of global warming. (A 2004 study by an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that as the world's oceans and gulfs become superheated, more powerful hurricanes result.) And it demonstrated his unwillingness to make government spending a priority (slashing requests by the Army Corps of Engineers for funds to reinforce the levees around New Orleans). There is tax money to give back, after all.

Here is the Bush agenda come home to roost - on a roof. And it's caved in. Can't get much more real than that.


--WhooooHOOOOOOOO BRAVOOOOOO!!!--

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