In blame game, all roads lead back to Washington - Toronto Star

[CatBoreal]

In blame game, all roads lead back to Washington

JENNIFER WELLS

On Thursday night New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin gave an interview to a local radio station, WWL-AM, and its correspondent, Garland Robinette. It makes for tough listening, particularly the ending, when Robinette falls to tears, and finds himself struggling with his sign-off.

Robinette had asked the question everyone would want to ask: What had the mayor said to U.S. President George W. Bush, who had not, at least not then, made an appearance on the ground in the besieged city? "I told him we had an incredible crisis here and that his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice," the mayor told Robinette.

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The person destined to remain in the eye of the storm is Bush himself. Not since the release of the infamous photos of Abu Ghraib has the phrase "failure of leadership" had such currency. Those best positioned to assess that charge are the victims themselves. Some of those in the Big Easy may harken back to the days of Louisiana governor Huey Long, a demagogue and a corrupt demagogue at that, but one who championed the state's poor. Bush now faces charges that the poor and disadvantaged were the most left behind in New Orleans. These are people the president would never call "my base" as he once did his well-heeled benefactors. It will not go unnoticed that the U.S. Senate is scheduled next week to consider a long-promised piece of Bush legislation, the elimination of the estate tax. As Hendrik Hertzberg notes in the current issue of The New Yorker, the tax relief will sift "some $1.5 billion a week — about the same as the Iraq war — from the public treasury to the bank accounts of the heirs to the nation's twenty thousand biggest fortunes."


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Makes for some interesting reading...

Cam