Mississsippi Paper Slaps Bush Like A Stunned Monkey

Bush 'damage

control' can't gloss

travesty

By Robert S. McElvaine
Special to The Clarion-Ledger

Damage control is what the Bush administration does best. Not preventing damage or controlling real physical and human damage; their specialty is political damage control.

The official line now on the criminal failure to do what was needed to save thousands of lives last week is: 1) We shouldn't look back; forget about the people who died and why; let's look forward. 2) Any failures were on the part of the Democratic governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans, not the president.

Both prongs of Karl Rove's political strategy reflect the administration's utter irresponsibility. First, they don't do the responsible thing. Then, when something horrible happens, they say don't worry about who was responsible — and, anyway, responsibility was someone else's.

Bigger than 'politics'

This is not about politics. Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas deserves praise for his great efforts to take in huge numbers of people displaced by the storm. It is about people suffering and dying because of the incompetence, indifference and irresponsibility of the Bush administration. Have the gullible people who blame "liberal Democrats" not noticed all the criticism of the administration coming from Republican politicians, The Wall Street Journal, and even Fox News?

The governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans are at fault? Did the people who let the administration move their lips not see Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin pleading for the federal government to send in assistance?

Who has argued the federal government is a beast that must be starved? Who is it that slashed the budgets of the agencies that would have strengthened the levees? Who is it that sent the National Guard to Iraq? Who is it that put a clueless man in charge of FEMA?

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" President Bush told FEMA Director Michael Brown last Friday.

"Brownie," the political crony Bush made director of the agency in charge of dealing with disasters, said that he didn't know until the Thursday after the hurricane that there were some 25,000 hungry, thirsty, and in some cases dying people at the New Orleans Civic Center.

So, Lott's a 'liberal,' too?

"Heck-of-a-job" Brownie's agency blocked people trying to deliver water and fuel to New Orleans, kept the Coast Guard and Navy from delivering supplies and providing medical facilities, and, according to Republican U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, earlier this week had 20,000 trailers desperately needed in Mississippi "sitting in Atlanta" because the agency wouldn't release them until contracts were signed.

Will the administration and those who sing whatever tune it plays now classify Sen. Lott as a liberal Democrat?

For his part, Bush told jokes while people died. During a touch-down at the New Orleans airport on last Friday, with people literally dying within a hundred yards, Bush chuckled about his hell-raising visits to New Orleans when he was a boozing young man.