More on Bush and Katrina

There are some reactions to the Bush-Katrina speech in the papers this morning. I said below that I don't see this as Karl Rove's finest hour and others agree.

In what may be her last "free commentary" for awhile Maureen Dowd describes it as Disney on Parade.

On Thursday night, Mr. Bush wanted to appear casually in charge as he waged his own Battle of New Orleans in Jackson Square. Instead, he looked as if he'd been dropped off by his folks in front of a eerie, blue-hued castle at Disney World. (Must be Sleeping Beauty's Castle, given the somnambulant pace of W.'s response to Katrina.)

All Andrew Jackson's horses, and all the Boy King's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. His gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.

And as Brian Williams noted yesterday the Madison Avenue PR folks were busy.

The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting - the same Reaganesque stagecraft they had provided when W. made a prime-time television address from Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On that occasion, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, and Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and a lighting expert, rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used for "Monday Night Football" and Rolling Stones concerts, floated them across New York Harbor and illuminated the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop for Mr. Bush.

On his blog over at The Washington Post Joel Aschenbach makes us leave Fantasy Land and look at what Bush didn't say.

In his speech from the French Quarter, Bush decided not to mention that his party wants to make cuts to Medicaid, or that he has championed and enacted tax cuts that benefit the richest Americans. He didn't mention that he has committed the nation to a long and costly overseas war with no end in sight. He didn't, in fact, say anything that would identify himself as a conservative Republican. He didn't even look like the President of the United States! He might have been a basketball coach, or a dentist. Let's just say it directly: He was in disguise. He might as well have worn a dashiki.

[.....]


Bush opened the federal floodgates for aid to the Gulf Coast. The man is a big spender, not one of these nervous Nellies who get twitchy if the deficit goes above half a trillion. Americans have already donated a billion dollars, but Bush can match that 200-to-1. Direct payments, tax breaks, free federal land for impoverished homesteaders: It's a grab-bag of federal largess. "Not since FDR and the New Deal" has a president offered so much, Ted Koppel concluded. Bush, speaking of disaster response, said, "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces..." If Thomas Jefferson were spinning any faster in his grave he'd create a wormhole in the spacetime continuum.

The "broader role for the military" seems to have attracted the most attention from the conservatives.

Of course after the speech Bush returned to Fantasy Land economics

One day after pledging to undertake one of history's largest reconstruction efforts, President Bush served notice yesterday that rebuilding the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast will require spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.

Amid growing concern among congressional Republicans about the huge cost of the planned reconstruction effort, Bush said the federal government can foot the bill without resorting to a tax increase. "You bet it's going to cost money. But I'm confident we can handle it," Bush said. "It's going to mean that we're going to have to cut unnecessary spending."

This is so delusional and absurd that no comment is necessary.

Bush's photo op on Thursday may result in a temporary small uptick in the polls. The cluster-fuck that is Iraq will be on the front page again soon and the federal reconstruction effort in the Gulf will still be managed by a collection of incompetent political cronies so it will be temporary. The country has finally seen the "real" George W. Bush and even the best PR men won't be able to repair that broken image.