of all the things to tarnish bush's image!

[unblock]

bush has been a non-stop screw-up since long before he first occupied the oval office. yet, with a huge helping hand from a VERY biased media, he usually manages to break even or better no matter how much we all know he screwed up.

one way or another, they come up with some lies to pretend he did well, and enough people seem to go along with it.

OF ALL THE THINGS TO SCREW UP (i mean, strictly from a media, p.r. perspective) it's absolutely astounding to me that a natural catastrophe should be his media undoing.

i mean, nevermind the fact that his entire image is built around his supposedly great leadership in the wake of 9/11.

i'm just flabbergasted because handling a disaster like this is POLITICS 101. this is just plain kid's stuff from an image perspective. most times a politician gets on camera, he wins some but loses others. talk about any issue any you can't help but pay a price with SOME segment of your audience.

but in a disaster like this, there's just SO many EASY ways to score political points. i mean, just swoop down in marine one and scoop up someone off the roof top. use air force one to shuttle a handful of evacuees to safety. wade into the waters and hug someone. GRANDSTAND. how hard can that be?

then make a symbolic use of your official powers. propose some funding. announce major bucks to rebuild the affected area. announce tax breaks for families and small businesses in the area.


i'm not talking rocket science, i'm not talking the difference between a good politician and a great statesman.

what i'm saying is that the shrubbies managed to fail miserably at one of the EASIEST political situations imaginable.

unbelievable!

[unless]

1. I was thinking the same thing...and I've been waiting for the "Terrorists

"Terrorists broke the levee" announcement...

[pitohui]

2. like father like son

does the name andrew ring any bells?

:-)

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. The problem with putting Cronies in positions of responsibility

They are more likely to be buffoons. Add to that the inability to know they're buffoons.

But yes, I was really scratching my head the weekend before landfall trying to figure out why Rove didn't tell him: "Vacation's over".

[mrdmk]

15. Because that would mean Mr. Rove's civilian vacation would have been over

:nopity:

[MADem]

26. Rove is probably too busy, huddled with lawyers, trying like hell

to avoid indictment. Methinks Rover got sloppy, and took his eye off the ball (or the dumbbell, as the case may be).

[unblock]

28. you may have a point there. this is REALLY baffling for rove

it's really hard to imagine rove screwing up such a basic p.r. opportunity like this. ya gotta think he wasn't involved for some reason.

[MADem]

29. He knows he ain't looking at ankle bracelet time

He's in some deep doo doo...and he has to time everything so he can get his pardon BEFORE his boy gets "peached." All politics is local, and saving Rove's ass is JOB ONE for Karlyboy!!

[unblock]

30. maybe he could ask martha how to take the bracelet off!

i would love for martha to get that call and say, 'go cheney yourself'!

:rofl:

[teknomanzer]

39. The Rove Strategy...

only consists of cutting people down... its the only play in his book. Rove can only make his man look good if someone else looks bad.

[leftofthedial]

4. plus, any positive thing you do will have zero critics

spend some money

send in the "troops"

make a public statement of sympathy and commitment


ANYTHING but play golf, make stump speeches to handpicked repuke audiences on a bullshit nonstarter pet "policy" initiative, play the guitar for chrissake! (Must not have studied Nero at Yale, huh?), eat cake, STAY ON FUCKING VACATION!,

what an incompetent boob

a towel-snapping frat boy

the contrast between his shallowness and the depth of the rising flood waters just became obvious to everyone (except the insane idiot 23%)

I think it's kind of fitting that he's shown to be in over his head by a flood. A flood of toxic sewage (like the one spewed by Limbaugh, Rove, et al).

[Geoff R. Casavant]

5. It's quite simple

Rove was still on vacationwhen everything started -- he's been running the media angles for so long everyone else was off their game. By the time he could take charge it was too late and they have been playing catch-up ever since.

[freeplessinseattle]

6. Isn't that interesting? he takes it all for granted I guess

and makes me wonder if KKKarl isn't as involved as usual, youda thunk he'd know better than to let smirky wait so long to do something or even express concern at all.

[kahleefornia]

7. Complacency

They all just dropped their own ball. Second term, no election to worry about, now we get to just play with our silly Social Security reform and gay marriage...

Good post. I totally agree. If he had just gone on TV and made a couple of speeches about "the spirit and determination" of the people, and what makes America great, and hey, chins up - we'll get through this...

But no - we get "Heck of a job, Brownie" and "we're trying, but the results are unacceptable." huh????????

[sandnsea]

8. He can't go back to the grandstand again

That's all he's ever done and this disaster makes it clear. People want results, not another "mission accomplished" photo-op. But this should have been kid stuff, he's got the entire US military at his command and it should have been so easy to just cooperate with Blanco and Nagin and send in the help they requested, however they requested it. He chose politics and ideology over saving lives, and the people know it.

[tanyev]

9. You can't go on the teevee and promise to hunt down a hurricane

and get it dead or alive. That's the only response they know how to give. That is why a natural disaster flummoxes them so.

[Jamastiene]

14. With Mother Nature, he can't make up an axis of evil to go

after and then later swear he never promised to get them dead or alive. I remember when he said it was important to get bin Laden dead or alive and then denying it later.

[bloom]

10. It just makes his narcissism (personality disorder) more obvious

to more people (we've seen it all along).

[Xipe Totec]

11. Bush didn't know there was a disaster

Because he has shot every messenger that brought him bad news. The surviving members of his administration have learned to keep their mouths shut.

Remember that Shrub prides himself in not reading newspapers and calls the free press the 'Media Filter'.

So it took days for him to realize what a cluster fuck was happening in the Gulf coast. By then it was too late.

Poor bubble boy...

[Pithy Cherub]

12. pResident * Disaster, was incompetent at being incompetent....

How about twin pictures of licking your frosting covered fingers while the worst storm ever hits the Gulf Coast. How about strumming a guitar while people drowned. How about vacationing in the Hotel Del (on edit) wheeling & dealing at a 5 star resort while people died. His ass should have been in the White House AS SOON AS Katrina hit Category 5 status. But noooooo...

Then the indignity of * proudly having your picture taken for press distribution while flying over the disaster area - not stopping, flying over, like a fucking looky loo scouting real estate!

So Bush cannot even rise to the level of politically incompetent because he has been series stuck on stooopid! A HUGH!!!!111!!! political nightmare!

[Lindacooks]

13. That was my point after 9/11. It's SO EASY to look like a leader

when a disaster strikes. The fact that chimp messed this one up so badly just points to his stupidity and callousness.

[unblock]

16. even his behavior on 9/11 points to this

he peed in his pants and ran around like a chicken with its head cut off for days before someone handed him a bullhorn and some firemen. he made a rotten speech and a lousy-photo op days later, but the press helped him out and somehow people now seem to think he was a good leader that day.

part of that is, of course, the usual right-wing media bias, but part of it also is that people NEED the image a good leader in times of crisis and will PROJECT their need onto whomever pretends to that role.

so now we have the p.r. conundrum that he could handle a surprise multiple hijacking terrorist attack on major american landmarks, but he couldn't handle a well-predicted hurricane?

what a loser.


thank goodness he's utterly incompetent. can you imagine what hell this country would be in if he were as evil as he is and actually competent?

[sam sarrha]

17. if W took a sh*t on stage, CNN'd say how smoothly it came out, FAUX would

have a whole panel to discuss how much it smelled like Roses... and LimpBaugh have tears in his eyes over how it glistened in the stage lights...and did you see that Steam..!!! there is a REAL man..!!:banghead:

[ComerPerro]

18. Its the apathy

If Bush had been on his vacation on 9/11, he would have been toast just a few months later. I am sure he would have had the same reaction. He probably wouldn't have come back from the ranch or wherever the hell he might have been fundraising for five or six days.

But now, because of the timing of this disaster, maybe people are finally starting to realize how lazy Bush is, how unwilling he is to do any kind of work, and how little he cares about the people of this country.

[unblock]

22. he doesn't seem to care about anything

he always seems strangely unexcited even on election night. he only gets animated when talking about killing people.

hopefully, the country will soon stop caring about him. he was slated to become a lame duck immediately following the 2006 elections; maybe now he'll become a lame duck NOW.

[tinrobot]

24. He's depressed and bored.

I see the same thing in his actions. Outside of the many perks that come with the position, I honestly don't think he likes being president. It's the first job he's had where he can't just walk away and let somebody else fix his problems.

It's hard work... hard work.

[unblock]

25. it's hard work -- he spends it all fostering the illusion he's in charge

why would he actually want to be president?
i think he wanted to be president for one reason only -- to get saddam. i think he wanted that from the moment daddy decided not to invade baghdad. that's when he got an image consultant and started sobering up his image.

that's the only thing he's ever seemed to care about. the rest of it was just hard work. and all that pining for dictatorship? that's because with a dictatorship, he wouldn't have to do all the crap he spends his time doing. he could just invade iraq and that's that.

other than getting back at saddam, why would he want to be president? oh sure, we all know he loves that the people around him suck up to him, that's a great perk. but what does he want to be president FOR? other than saddam, there's never been anything there.

the people who put him in charge had their agenda, but shrub's agenda has always been to appropriate the greatest armed forces this planet has ever seen for use in his own personal vendetta against one man.

[Bucky]

19. I almost didn't recommend for Greatest Page

You're so right. From a purely marketing POV, they've passed up on a doozy. Anything "compassionate" now just looks like a CYA operation.

[Blue Belle]

20. It sounds to me like divine intervention...

The irony of this is overwhelming... when trouble plagued him before, Bush could invoke his personal relationship with God and dodge just about any bullet from Enron to Gitmo, and his "base" would rally in a patriotic/religious fervor. But this natural disaster/to some: will of God has been his waterloo. The faith-based remember how Bush rushed back from his vacation for Schievo when they see those bodies being brought out of that nursing home where the occupants died due to poor response. His lack of compassion was evident when he flew over in Air Force One and refused to stop, even though his citizens were stranded on their roof-tops. His attempt to play politics and put the blame yet again on the Democrats (in this case the Mayor and the Governor), has backfired and shown the people that the emperor has no clothes - no amount of "Days of Prayer" or photo-ops with shelter residents are going to save him. You're right - this is Politics 101 and any other idiot would have gone back to the White House ASAP, but the Bush Administration's arrogance of "getting away with it" too many times before has made them feel untouchable and dulled their reaction time. Being forced to rely upon incompetent people who were elevated to crucial positions (Brown and Cherthoff), this administration's cronyism and power mongering cruelty has bit them in the ass. If his poll numbers are any indication, the public is starting to see Bush as the failure we've known him to be all along... it's just heartbreaking that so many innocent people had to parish for the population to get the message. Is it God's will that this happened? Who knows... but I don't think God's on Bush's side in this one.

[unblock]

21. you're right. the lies are catching up to him

the schiavo posturing, the mission accomplished photo-op.

it all was fun when it was just a game. but when people are dying, people don't want to play games.

[MADem]

27. And they sure as hell don't want a song and dance about why it

took so damn long to get those folks any help, either. But that doesn't stop monkeyboy, does it?

[nookiemonster]

23. Nominated!

n/t

[I Have A Dream]

31. I hate to say this, but I think that a big part of why many...

Americans who previously supported B* are criticizing him now about Katrina is because they're already p*ssed about the price of gas. If gas prices were low, I think that they'd still be giving him a pass for the most part.

[unblock]

32. that was a large part of carter's undoing, too.

people are unusually fixated on gas prices.

years without a pay raise, bouts of unemployment, they'll still believe it when they hear the economy's doing fine and that they themselves are better off.

but give someone steady employment, a raise, and high gas prices, and there's hell to pay!

[I Have A Dream]

33. Wow - I never really thought about it this way; you're right! n/t

[WePurrsevere]

34. Perhaps it's because this truly was the unexpected...

just pondering....

[DLnyc]

37. Ouch! Good point!

[tblue37]

35. And they definitely know HOW to do this--

since that is exactly what they did in Florida in an election year. Remember the pics of Bush handing out bags of ice to hurricane victims?

Considering his whole party's (and his mother's) "Let them eat cake" responses, it is incredibly ironic that he was eating cake right when he should have been showing himself to be concerned about those in the path of Katrina.

[DLnyc]

36. Perhaps Rove was busy with repsonse to Sheehan.

Paying 'volunteers' to march in their big 9/11 celebration, organizing sliming of various anti-war people, planning 'coverage' of some big Iraq operation (on the Syrian border, say). If I recall, the weeks before Katrina saw opposition to the war finally starting to snowball. Just a thought.

[unblock]

38. more a matter of, "no big donors in new orleans, right karl?"

"right, george, all the big donors got out before the hurricane hit. of course they're all fully insured, but we'll be sure to funnel plenty of disaster relief money to them, anyway!"