WaPo: A Bid to Repair a Presidency

[deadparrot]

The main text of President Bush's nationally televised address last night was the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but the clear subtext was the rebuilding of a presidency that is now at its lowest point ever, confronted by huge and simultaneous challenges at home and abroad -- and facing a country divided along partisan and racial lines.

Hurricane Katrina struck at the core of Bush's presidency by undermining the central assertion of his reelection campaign, that he was a strong and decisive leader who could keep the country safe in a crisis. Never again will the White House be able to point to his often-praised performance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, without skeptics recalling the fumbling and slow-off-the-mark response of his administration after the hurricane and the flooding in New Orleans.

His response to these criticisms last night was a speech largely shorn of soaring rhetoric and stirring turns of phrase of the kind that marked his efforts to rally the country after the terrorist attacks. Instead, as if recognizing that his own road back will be one marked by steady but small steps, he spoke with workmanlike focus, spelling out the details of what has been done and will be done to help those displaced by the storm.

Katrina has added an enormous new burden to a presidency already bending under the stresses of public dissatisfaction with Bush's policies in Iraq and growing anger over rising gas prices. Bush's objective last night was to set out a strategy and commitment for recovery along the Gulf Coast. But the critical question is whether the damage will limit his ability to govern effectively in the remaining 40 months of his presidency and whether he will successfully rebuild the Gulf Coast and Iraq, let alone win approval for other major initiatives on taxes and Social Security.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/15/AR2005091502552.html

[teryang]

1. Why bother?

These pathetic attempts to take the usurper seriously as a constitutionally elected president aren't even worth the paper they are printed on.

There is no road back, only the steadfast indifference of the financial elites.

To call his reactionary proposals major initiatives is twisted pap.

[ixion]

2. Road back to where? Where has * ever taken this country that was good?

Since he and his band of amoral, unethical, murdering thugs stole the elections... in the name of 'putting the adults back in charge'... where have they ever guided this country that wasn't a complete disaster?

No place. Nowhere.

The 'road back' is to a place we've never seen under this malicious admin.

[Bgno64]

3. The problem...

...is that as good as the rhetoric sounded - and as much as Middle America may take to it - the reality is that this whole reconstruction will be run by Rove, the waste and graft will be monumental, cronyism, and on and on. More of the same - the disaster after the disaster.