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First, he's already had at least a couple of weeks to rehabilitate himself. All those trips down to New Orleans. That carefully-staged and scripted speech. And it hasn't helped. So timing the arrival of the National Guard to his appearance in THIS "ground zero" did NOT elicit the kind of mental manipulations in the minds of the "dumb public" that the rovians have had in mind. It always worked before, and they probably assumed that the same old schtick would just keep on working again and again. But no. Katrina's realities and all those photos and all that video - all those scenes of wreckage and desolate people and floating bodies and crying moms with their babies and discouraged elderly people hunched over on curbs - that stuck. And it's held. And it will be VERY hard to forget - for ANYONE with even half a conscience. Those memories will be lasting. And they'll keep being refreshed every time there's a "think piece" or some such about the Katrina aftermath, and the "second-day leads" and reaction pieces as this stuff slogs through Congress and the year-end reviews and all the rest of it. This will NOT GO AWAY. And the very worst of it was during that horrible week when george was AWOL AGAIN. And those two concepts are irrevocably linked in people's minds. That's when he was sitting on his ass.
Second, with those same all-important FIRST IMPRESSIONS still painfully fresh in the national psyche, people will not be able to help themselves - they'll be making comparisons. And those comparisons will skew toward "well, he sure didn't neglect TEXAS, did he... (prominent fishy smell follows)" or "I wonder how many of THOSE hurricane survivors are poor and/or black (more fishy smell follows)" or "Man! Why couldn't he have done this for those poor Katrina victims (even more fishy smell follows)?"
He will NOT weather this storm. It looks very much as though a lot of people have been literally jolted awake. You don't forget this stuff. Just anyway. But the fact that it was so visible, and VISUAL, all over TV and cable news, all over the front pages, and the news magazines and even the special issues of "People" magazine. Since it seems as though most of America processes information visually, it's the VISUALS, the PICTURES, that pack the biggest punch. And that stuff is just UNFORGETTABLE. EVERYONE who's followed this coverage will undoubtedly have one or two very distinct memories - a photo, a live shot by some increasingly indignant reporter bridling at the disconnect between what the political hacks said and what they were seeing with their own eyes. (AHA! There's that visual aspect again.)
There are more people every day, evidently including Jack Cafferty according to what my husband saw on CNN today, who are now suspicious and smell a rat and regard all this as nothing more than bush's political posturing because he found HIMSELF in trouble, not because he saw his fellow Americans in trouble. Cafferty, according to my husband, voiced a suspicion about how it was important to "follow the money" with all the rebuilding and other rescue/recovery/resuscitation projects. Also, even better, Cafferty evidently noted that "the same crooks" are involved in the decision-making now as were in place when Katrina was still inbound. If he's saying it, other people are thinking it - and clearly are emailing him about it.
The fact that people like Cafferty are still on this side of it is because their programs, or their segments, or their schtick, is based on the input they're getting from their viewers/listeners/readers, and all that input is evidently STILL negative toward bush. Otherwise, believe me, guys like him would have said differently, or brought this up in some other way while on camera.
I think the response to Rita will only underscore how bad, negligent, and utterly sinful the response to Katrina was. Even those who are probably inclined to say "well, at least he finally got his act together here" will follow that remark with "too bad he didn't (or WHY didn't he) do this after Katrina."
I don't think bush is gonna get out of this one.
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