What Will It Take?
Last week, George W. Bush sustained a Category 5 encounter with reality. Over the course of the week, the American people and the press watched with horror as the federal government responded first with indifference, then with agonizing incompetence, and finally with sickening dishonesty to the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in our recent history.
For some of us, this response fit a depressing pattern. The scale of human tragedy may have been larger and more visible and the sense of failure more immediate, but the underlying dynamics were present in the same toxic combination that has marked Bush’s forays into practically every aspect of foreign and domestic policy.
Katrina presents the Bush approach in microcosm: the contempt for expert opinion; the arrogant rejection of sound policy in favor of worthless, self-dealing nonsense that can’t survive first contact with the problems it is intended to solve; important responsibilities delegated to inept political cronies; dithering, cowardly leadership when it counts; stiff and peevish public communication; staged photo-ops to give the illusion of progress; wholesale dishonesty in the face of probing questions; and generous attempts to intimidate anyone raising legitimate criticisms.
Considering the surprising aggressiveness of the press during the crisis, there was some cause for hope that the moment of recognition of the reality of this Administration might finally be at hand.
Hah! This morning, David Broder, “dean” of the Washington punditocracy, wrote:
It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, a reminder that modern communications have reshaped the constitutional division of powers in our government in ways that the Founding Fathers never could have imagined.
Because the commander in chief is also the communicator in chief, when a crisis emerges the nation's eyes turn to him as to no other official. We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant and opens new opportunities for him to regain his standing with the public.
What planet does this guy live on?
Is there any act of malfeasance, cowardice or mendacity that Broder and his ilk won’t look upon as an “opportunity” for Bush to reverse his unbroken lifelong record of abject, inveterate failure? Is there any limit to the amount of delusory wishful thinking, any end to the river of indulgence extended to this trainwreck of an Administration, any fact under the sun that will break the spell of infantile happy talk that has displaced constructive, rational analysis in our public discourse?
I would say that it’s this disconnect between the plain obvious truth and the inexplicably mild reactions of Washington pundits and politicians (especially Democrats) that has been consistently the most frustrating aspect of Bush’s presidency.
Bush’s policies have destroyed our international prestige, exposed the limits of our military power, shredded the social contract, pushed millions of hard-working people to the brink of economic despair, and put at risk the basic protections of our Constitution. Within living memory, the American government was able to accomplish great things: a successful space program, the construction of the interstate highway system, the R&D that laid the groundwork for the Internet. Today, our capacity to perform the most basic core functions of protecting citizens and providing relief from natural disasters is in question, if not in ruins. Moreover, this destruction was accomplished with the speed of a family gambling away their savings, their kids’ college fund, and the title to their house during a long weekend in Vegas.
Bush’s supporters not only don’t apologize for this record, they brag about it and promise more of the same. Read Grover Norquist. Read Pat Robertson. Read the PNAC manifesto. The intentions of these folks couldn’t be clearer, and they are determined to have their way regardless of any real-world consequences.
And yet, otherwise-sane people look on all of this without alarm and without any apparent sense of concern or urgency. “Well, he means well, and he’s the only President we have,” or, “Maybe the Democrat would have been worse.”
As if anyone in the history of the Republic, with the possible exceptions of James Buchanan and Herbert Hoover, has ever been worse.
As if this lazy, cowardly, dull-witted man whose every public utterance is tinged with annoyance at the very concept of having to answer for his actions, might someday rise to the occasion the way we all agreed to pretend he had after 9/11 (once he put down My Pet Goat, emerged from running scared all day on Air Force One and changed into some dry pants).
As if there were even the chance that a group of people defined by their contempt for community, their disparagement of the idea of the “public good” and their sense of entitlement to power might somehow propose policies that promote broad-based prosperity instead of the most short-sighted looting of the public treasury for private gain.
The people who support Bush out of ignorance, ideological fanaticism or short-sighted self-interest are bad enough (and if I ever start to believe that these folks constitute an actual majority of Americans, I will think hard about leaving the country). But what’s worse are those, like Broder and his ilk whose intelligence, experience and conscience should serve them better, but don’t – and among this sorry lot I include shamefully large numbers of Democratic officeholders, consultants and opinionmakers. You are doing no good and much harm by your constant apologies for Bush, by your hopeless attempts to compromise and accommodate with the unacceptable, and your unending stream of fanciful excuses and false hopes. By your complicity, you have enabled nothing less than the rapid destruction of everything that makes America great.
There was some hope that the stark images of Katrina – the human suffering contrasted with the loathsome indifference and incompetence of Bush and his cronies – might finally break the spell. Obviously Broder’s skull is too thick for even this kind of blow. And so I’m left wondering: what more will it take? Are we all now victims of the soft bigotry of low expectations?
12:09:45 PM 
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