Read Dan Froomkin [emphasis added]:
White House spokesman Trent Duffy said this yesterday: “I hope people don’t draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing. He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times.”
But where, then, is the first-hand evidence of this engagement? Where is the evidence of Bush’s leadership?
The government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was (and continues to be) a massive failure. The new videotape offers a visceral illustration of how some, if not a lot of the blame, lay in a leader who saw his job as expressing unjustified confidence and making empty promises, rather than taking action to make sure his people were safe.
Hurricane Katrina (as I wrote as early as Aug. 31 ) was the second great challenge of Bush’s presidency.
Which inevitably makes me think of how Bush responded, in a moment also “caught on tape,” to his first. After finding out that the nation was under attack on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush remained frozen in his seat in a Florida classroom for seven minutes.
The grainy video from that classroom, a hallmark of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” can be found at The Memory Hole.
A staff report from the 9/11 commission described that morning:
“The President was seated in a classroom of second graders when, at approximately 9:05, Andrew Card whispered to him: ‘A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.’ The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis.”
But even after he left the classroom, he didn’t call the Pentagon. He didn’t ask if there were other aircraft hijacked or missing. Instead, he and his staff worked on a statement to the press.
Faced with challenges like these — an attack on our nation or a natural disaster bearing down on our shores — we can reasonably expect that our presidents will stand up, demand answers and options, and lead.
If the White House insists that Bush did that with Hurricane Katrina, it is incumbent upon them to back up that claim up with evidence. Otherwise, the image of him mouthing platitudes threatens to become defining of his presidency.
Tuesday night, ABC News’ Elizabeth Vargas asked the President about the administration’s response to Katrina, and the failures of the Homeland Security Department, an institution the president opposed until it became politically impossible to do so. The President admitted, “There was no situational awareness, and that means that we weren’t getting good, solid information from people who were on the ground…in many cases we were relying upon the media, who happened to have better situational awareness than the government.â€
Viewers must have been confused. Was that supposed to be an excuse or an explanation? How in the world was such a failure possible four years after 9/11? The President even offered DHS head Michael Chertoff his own “Brownie†moment during the interview, saying that he thinks he’s “doing a fine jobâ€. Given the President’s assessment of Michael Brown’s job in New Orleans and the Congressional Medals of Honor be bestowed on Paul “Pace Yourself†Bremer and George “Slam Dunk†Tenet – one can only imagine what it takes to demonstrate genuine incompetence in this administration.
And the moral is, strutting around in a flight suit is not “leadership.” I think finally most people are catching on.
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Update: See also “What Bush Was Told About Iraq” by Murray Waas.
I think this news means that Brownie did do a heckuva job!
Of course Bush was engaged. Why do you think the handling of the tragedy was so inept. He should have said to Brownie,
“Brownie, you and I have made one helluva mess.” Actually it would have been better if Bush had stayed in Crawford with his head under the covers.
Maha, I wonder if you will comment (here or in a seperate post) on the tapes of Saddam discussing his WMD capabilities and plans. This seems to be highly touted by the right wing as vindication. “See, they did TOO have WMD!” (Even if they did, was that why we really went in there? Doubt it).
Lurker — in a nutshell — I understand the tapes were made in 1995.
The Clinton Administration bombed some chemical facilities in 1998.
I understand most biochemical weapons have a finite shelf life. Eventually they degrade. I don’t know if this is applicable to what Saddam was thought to have, however.
More recently, Iraqi scientists who had been employed by Saddam to make weapons have testified they really didn’t have much, but they were lying to Saddam about the work they were doing to keep him happy.. In other words, Saddam himself didn’t know how few weapons he actually had.
So tapes of whatever Saddam thought he had in 1995 don’t prove he had any WMDs in 2003.
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We have watched this horror show since 2000 and wondered at how it took so long for the wheels to come off and for the public to notice. The work of government goes on, the employees manage the forest,engineer the waterways, the coast guard patrols the ports and shores, the social security administration sends out the checks and the military does more than should be asked. Congress meanwhile is busy playing golf while the lobbyists write bills, let legislators vote on them , and then rewrite them for Bush to sign. The John ONeills, Dilulios,Powells and even Ashcroft left and so did the vast middle – lawyers at DOJ, bureaucrats at FDA, CIA was purged etc etc. So now only the toadies and planted xtian seeds are left. The Bubble got promoted to fill all the posts for the second term. The second term therefore is falling apart fast. No one reliable is left to mind the store and things that take real leadership don’t get done.We begin to notice the rot.
The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis.
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“Classroom.” Not “country,” “classroom.” Bush’s response was appropriate for a roomful of second graders. Unfortunately, he is not the president of a second-grade class.
Well, he told himself and us he is the leader, and he and many people did believe it. And they still believed it, even when he went in hiding after the wtc collapsed.
If he were a leader he would never have had to tell us, we would have known anyway.
Why would people ever think he can handle terror best, what has he done to cope with it? We get on disaster after another from his administration. Only failures and failures.
Regarding Murray Waas’s article – Why are we so afraid to say the “I” word. What more proof does anyone need? I don’t want to sound redundant but…Clinton was impeached for lying about sex – this guy got a second term after lying about the reason for going to war – a war that has killed over 2,000 americans and severely maimed thousands more – not to mention the thousands of Iraqi casualties that nobody seems to care about. I couldn’t believe Nancy Pelosi’s response today when asked point blank if Bush should be impeached. I generally like her outspokeness – but today she did a very obvious “dance” while she debated her answer – a resounding “NO”. I can only hope that she was weighing her options – saying “no” now because the party is in the minority versus saying “yes” when the party is in the majority after next November elections. One can only hope!
Anonymous: you’re right, Junior is not the president of a second-grade class. He’s not smart enough.
You could air a tape of a crazed W on the roof of the White House with a bottle of booze firing a machine gun at tourists and a core group of people would still support him.
I don’t get the reluctance to go after him either. Impeach? Here’s a better I word for him: Incarcerate. The son of a bitch is a war criminal, a murder and a gargantuan thief. The evidence for that assertion is overwhelming. He belongs behind bars forever.
maha – Is your Subject, “Bush’s Leadership” meant to be an oxymoron?!!
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