The absentee.
By: trevino · Section: GOP
The NYT's bizarre fantasies of being ravished by the Leader notwithstanding, there is a definitive public role for a President in these circumstances. Regrettably for that dwindling band among us who feel the Republic is strengthened by every inactive, hands-off officeholder, modern democracy demands that an elected representative involve himself in the great events of the day. At a bare minimum, he must appear informed and active, lest the perception of leaderlessness engender its own reality.
President Bush is failing to meet this minimum.
The President's lackluster afternoon address yesterday was followed by a truly disastrous Good Morning America interview this morning. (No video or transcript yet, but a BBC writeup is here.) In it, the President went from making the usual minor errors -- stating that the number of "missing" was unknown, when he probably meant the dead -- to making a truly stupefying one: stating that the breaching of the levees was an unforeseen event. This is simply false (see any of the usual left wing sites for copious sourcing), and it's such a basic error in this case as to suggest a real detachment from the situation at hand. New Orleans has been on borrowed times, behind insufficient levees, for decades; it's incredible that the President either does not know or will not acknowledge this.
What does this have to do with the relief and recovery effort per se? Very little. What does it have to do with the President's political fate? A great deal. Fairly or not, his perceived engagement with the de facto loss of a major American city is now the single most important issue affecting his second term agenda. It won't take long for many to make the connection that it's just this sort of de facto loss -- albeit to terrorism rather than natural disaster -- that his Administration has purportedly been preparing to handle since 9/11. That he seems disengaged, and that at the moment those purported preparations seem ephemeral indeed, together may well represent a ripping-away of the facade of the President-as-protector that won him reelection.
It's too early to know, of course. But for the sake of his agenda -- and really, for the sake of our refugee fellow-citizens -- the President needs to get on the ball.
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