I was mulling this thought before I read Clark's sign off from his week long guest slot on TPM Cafe. Clark helped me crystalize my thoughts a bit. It's a familiar pattern. A crisis boils and the president diddles, looks vacuous and handsome in a way that some people find "reassuring" (tho the impression escapes me). Experts warn about dire circumstances, old reports (Richard Clarke's memos, the July PDBs on bin Laden, the Weather Channel's ongoing forecast, the Hart-Rudman Report, the Pentagon estimates of how occupation will run).
But the MBA president ignores them all, either plays his gut instincts (as with Iraq) or plays golf (as with New Orleans and 9/11). These people can't plan--they're aggressively anti-intellectual and proud of it. Like monkeys they put on business suits and think they can type Shakespeare. But the typewriter only spits out a recipe for disaster.
Just add water.
Or just add oil. Simmer. Bake. The president doesn't care because, in part, he doesn't know how to care. He doesn't know how to heed warnings. He likes the power and can't see beyond it. Don't bother him with the details. When cold reality slaps him in his face, he's so numb he can hardly feel the pain of it. He'll need another pep talk from Cheney. He'll need some help relaxing and composing himself. I shudder to think what some of that help might be.
But I know full well what the cost to this country is, however, of having such vacuous, rudderless man in the White House. I don't blame the universe on George Bush. September 11th would probably have happened under a Gore presidency. The difference is that under Gore, bin Laden would be in jail by now and 1800 Americans, and tens of thousands of Iraqis, would be alive today. Katrina would have hit New Orleans under a Kerry administation. But the response--and therefor the bodycount there too--would have been far different, incalculably less.
The point is that the scope of this president's errors can be measured in the tallies of the dead.
From Wesley Clark's guest blogging on TPM Cafe:
Again, just this past week, there was at least 36 hours notice that a major hurricane was going to hit the Gulf Coast, including likely a devastating blow to New Orleans, which certainly came to pass. The President continued with his regular schedule on Monday and Tuesday in California, Arizona, and Texas to hold some staged Medicare events and enjoy more vacation time, while finally returning to the White House yesterday. The joint task force including National Guard set up by the Pentagon failed to be on the scene in New Orleans in a timely manner to stop the looting and assist in the evacuation. Where is the leadership?
Then just this morning, the President claimed that no one could have anticipated the levee breaches we've seen in New Orleans after Katrina hit. That's not leadership, that's an excuse. In fact, people have predicted this kind of disaster for many years, including President Bush's own FEMA in 2001, when they ranked hurricane flood damage to New Orleans among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing America. Instead, funding was significantly cut back, leaving key engineering projects on hold. Instead, this Administration focused on the war in Iraq, tax cuts, and private sector economic growth without asking the American people to make needed sacrifices for the good of the country. Again I ask you, where is the leadership?
I was born in New Orleans. This has been a truly horrible week for me. I pray we learn to fight this incompentant, corrupt administration and start to rebuild what has been five years now in the destroying.
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