Disaster reveals failure of Republican leadership

On August 30, two days after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, President George W. Bush had a photo-op involving him playing a guitar that had the presidential seal on it. How cute. Now if only he had had some New Orleans rescue plans with the presidential seal on them. Bush stayed on vacation in Crawford from Aug. 28, the day of Katrina’s landfall, until Aug. 31. As much as Bush wants the world to revolve around him, nature does not take vacations.

We cannot blame Bush for an act of God, no matter how much Bush claims to be able to talk to Him. Instead, the blame lies on Bush for everything before and after the hurricane.

Our country has not seen anything like this since the Great Depression, and it seems Hoover is again in the White House. Then again, the parallel doesn’t quite work — there is no such thing as a yearly Great Depression season. Every year we know our cities could be hit by a massive storm and we have known for years that New Orleans was especially vulnerable. The Republicans claim to be a party of faith, but faith without works is pointless, and repairing the levees was pretty important work.

Certainly the storm was horrible, but the real disaster was the preventable aftermath. For almost six years, the Republicans have cut flood planning and gutted the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Now we are paying for their laissez-faire policy. Only now, after perhaps thousands of deaths, do we see the failure. Government is supposed to help people, but when the people in office believe the government should not help, it won’t.

This was certainly the time for big government to act. This was the time to drop the sandbags, bring in the National Guard and say “God bless Uncle Sam.” Now we are supposed to say “God bless Halliburton,” considering it was just hired to repair New Orleans. Protecting America is not supposed to be profitable. The market does a great job at reacting, but what we needed was pre-emption.

People with nothing but what they can carry fill stadiums and convention centers, traveling from town to town, looking for refuge. We are the United States of America, the greatest country that ever has been or will be — we are supposed to be helping refugees in other countries, not our own. Something is very wrong.

Bush is overwhelmed and out of touch. Without a convenient enemy to blame, his administration is lost. We want leadership, but the president just wants a photo-op. For the past four years he has lived in his own little world and stretched the truth to the breaking point. But nature is not fair and balanced.

All it takes is a comparison between the FEMA talking points and the concurrent news coverage to see how unprepared the Bush administration was. FEMA chief Michael Brown reiterated the line that everything was going fine, while reporters saw storm shelters become tombs. People at home watching the news seemed to be more aware than Brown, but considering he has no previous disaster management experience, we should hardly have expected otherwise.

After the tax cuts, after the WMD lies and after the non-planning in Iraq, now we finally really pay for Bush’s incompetence. He has blamed everyone else, and now the buck must stop.

Waste may have piled up in New Orleans, but the real cess-pool is Crawford. Bush fiddled on his guitar while our cities burned.

Evan Mintz is a Hanszen College sophomore and opinion editor.

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