Yikes…not ANOTHER Katrina debate, right? :eek: And I’ve generally tried to stay out of the fray on this one…content to mostly hang back and watch as things develop, interjecting my opinions only lightly in the mountain of threads on this. I’ve been tring to form as an unbiased a picture of whats going on as I can with my own political baggage, and decide who, if anyone, is to blame for the disaster ongoing in New Orleans.
And I don’t want to talk about who is to blame here. Please…there are countless threads about it here and in every other forum on this board. What I want to ask is…what short, medium and long term effect will the early, constant and harsh criticism have on the rest of GW’s presidency? At every level I’ve seen blame heaped on the President, and right from day one when the leevies collapsed. I’ve heard about calls for his resignation, incarceration…everything short of drawing and quartering him (and my guess is this will be the thoughtful debate posed tomorrow )
So: Will it cause enough of a problem that the administration is forced to make radical changes? Will it cause, as seems to be the cherished fantasy of many on this board, Bush or perhaps some of the others high up in his administration to resign? Will it have a serious effect on the '06 elections? Long term effects on the '08 elections?
Or, is it possible that all this will backfire on the left? Right now it seems that they are in command of the debate, flogging it along by shear force of will and heat…but will this continue?
Anyway, I’m interested in folks thoughts on this aspect and the effects of how this is all going to play out.
I think Mike Brown will decide to “retire to work in the private sector.”
I think Blanco and Nagin will lose their next elections.
I think all the mayors and governors across the country will take a long, hard look at their local disaster recovery plans and make adjustments as needed.
ABC News and Gallup polls are suggesting many Americans are not laying blame at the federal level. I think once New Orleans arises from the ashes, TPTB will take a close look at their procedures and try to fix things.
I know xtisme does not want to talk about where blame falls. My intention is merely to correct the assertion ivylass made. Polls consistently show that people are very dissatisfied with the federal response to the hurricane, often expressing higher levels of negative opinion for the federal response than the state and local response.
No, poll data is completely cool Hentor…in fact I think it has direct impact on the question I’m actually asking…i.e. what effects, if any, will this event and the early and continued criticism have on Bush and the administration (and perhaps even the Congress/Senate makeup).
I just don’t want to get into direct finger pointing here, sticking to the EFFECTS of said finger pointing on the American people as a whole.
I don’t think there will be much of a long term effect. Bush’s numbers have been in a slow decline since the election and that trend will probably continue but it’s not going to make conservatives vote for Democrats. It should aready be abundantly clear that Bush could skin, fuck and eat a baby seal on live television and his supporters would not bat an eye. I honestly think the loyalty to Bush is more about hatred of the opposition than genuine support for the man himself. They’d rather burn the country down than give “liberals” the satisfaction of admitting they were wrong. There is a religious aspect to the current political divide which transcends all reason.
The best we can hope for is that the short term outrage in the public might result in a backlash against Bush in the '06 Congressional elections. If there is any real Waterloo for Bush, it won’t be this, it’ll be Plame. That’s a situation which the white House does not have the ability to completely control.
Realistically, very little. Bush isn’t ever going to face another election so he can shrug off any popularity drop. If he becomes too unpopular, you might see the 2006 and 2008 Republican candidates running as “outsiders” rather than “Team Bush” but that’s just a matter of spin.
I think it could hurt the Republican Party overall because it’s a clear demonstration of Republican incompetence at government. They keep talking the talk about not liking government, abot trying to strangle government and make it smaller and less capable and so forth. Maybe people will figure out that the Republicans are not just talking the talk about screwing up government, they’re also walking the walk. They fuck up disaster recovery, they screw up the economy with irresponsible financial policies, they get into useless and unneeded wars … if the average middle of the road voters finally catch on that Republicans don’t just hate government, but are absolutely awful at it, might spur a general shift toward the Democrats.
That said, Diogenes’ point about the irrationality of much of the support for the Bush Admin. in general and the Republicans in general is well taken. But the hardcore Republican votes are not what’s at issue, it’s the middle of the road voters … and they may be a LOT more rational about Bush and the Republicans’ policies than the hardcore Pubbies are.
I think it’s going to hurt all incumbents. Republican, Democrat, state, local, federal… This problem is all of theirs. Don’t forget, the Department of Homeland Security was a Democratic plan that the Republicans resisted for almost a year. John Kerry bragged about that during the last election. So bureaucratic red tape that prevented FEMA from doing its job can be pinned just as much on Democrats as on Republicans.
A while ago, I said I thought the state and municipal governments were about 50% to blame, and the Feds about 50%. Now I think it’s more like 70-30, after reading about the Red Cross being held out of the city and the citizens held in by a police barricade. So heads should and probably will roll at the lower governmental levels.
But what I really hope comes to light over this is the totally screwed up budgetary process. I hope the media finally pays some attention to ‘earmarks’, or ways in which politicians buy votes. It’s endemic to both parties, and it’s really the reason why important funding for things like known levee faults go unfunded for so llong. Because if the New Orleans delegation gets a $50 million levee, well then Alaska damn sure deserves some of that federal money! So a $233 million dollar bridge to nowhere gets built. And the states who have representation on the Budget committees, appropriations committees, and other important committees get proportionally more federal money. The budgetary system in the federal government is horrible inefficient, with national resources being doled out more on a basis of who has the most political clout than on what the country needs more urgently.
That’s the real issue. The Corps of Engineers can scream for money for levee repairs until they are blue in the face and not get it, and in the meantime some senator gets a public works projected approved in another state that the Corps didn’t ask for, doesn’t want, and now will have to build while serious problems go unfunded.
It’s a bipartisan problem, and it strikes right at the heart of power in Washington. So I expect it will get swepped under the rug, ‘official commissions’ won’t even broach the subject, and the electorate will grow a little more cynical and maybe punish a politician or two in the next election. Most likely Republicans, since they are currently in power and therefore have the burden of responsibility. Which they have totally blown.
Er…huh? You do realize that Bush doesn’t get to pick what effect public displeasure has ON him, right? Whether or not HE can be re-elected, there will be an effect from all this. Whether that effect is that the blame falls squarely on his (and the Republican’s) shoulders, falls on the local governments shoulders, or somewhere in between, Bush doesn’t get to decide what that effect is…he can merely work to redirect that blame. He’s not the king you know? And life goes on…new elections are coming up in '06 and we’ll have a new presidential election in '08.
Excellent point and post Sam. I think you are getting the the heart of the REAL issue here. But though I think its the real issue, I doubt whether it will actually impact on where the blame falls or its effect either short or long term. Whether the Right or Left wins the blame game, it will be business as usually (unfortunately) after the smoke and fury die down.
With the Republicans controlling all three branches of the government, it’s hard to blame the Democrats when things go wrong. The recent decision in the House where a group of Republican congressmen got together, decided what kind of hearings where going to be held, and then informed the House Democrats via a press conference does little to dispel the idea that the Republicans are running things.
The biggest effect this will have on the political landscape? “I, Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
It’s hard to see how that’s a reasonable assesment of the department’s creation. Yes, the Democrats proposed and demanded the department, but they didn’t have ultimate control over the specifics. In fact, the Bush administration very craftily forced many of them to oppose it by inserting all sorts of anti-union riders into the key bills that no Democrat could risk voting for. Bush’s people made the hires, appointed the people to run things, and it was Republicans, as the party in power, that ultimately had the say on shaping the department (as well as spending lavish amounts of Homeland Security pork). They made all the major choices on what the Department would spend its time doing: like the flatly, undeniably insane terror alert system.
I know people often wonder when Democrats will admit they lost the last few elections and that has consequences. As you note at the end: I also wonder when Republicans will admit that they won them, and that they can’t blame everything that happens on an evil government buerracracy… that they control.
And that’s the thing. I have every confidence that they will: not in the least BECAUSE the lower levels are composed of people from a party not in power. I have far less faith that the key failures exposed on the federal level: failures that point to just how unprepared we really are, 4 years after 9/11, for any sort of major disaster.
Thank you Ted Stevens!
I agree, and have ever since it became apparent that 9/11 was going to be a major boon for political contracting. It’s definately a two party problem, and I have little hope that even if Democrats rode the issue to eventual victory, that they’d be much better under the current system.
The bizarre thing right now is that the Republicans, despite leading the feeding frenzy, are still running on a platform of smaller, more efficient government and lower taxes, even while what they’re doing is directly inconsistent with this philosophy. It might have made sense when they were still critics of the Democratic establishment. But now, it’s simply bizarre.
I think the bureaucrats control the bureaucracy, and that’s why this crap is endemic to both parties. Nontheless…
Preach it. The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. The ‘party of smaller government’ has controlled all three branches of government for a long time now, and government spending has exploded. They’re total failures.
Regardless of the Dems shameful support of Homeland Security, it was Bush and Bush alone who chose to appoint a pathetically unqualified crony as head of FEMA.
Not in Louisana, they don’t, and that’s where the biggest problem in this disaster was. Like Sam, I was pretty much a 50/50 guy in the first few days after the hurricane hit, but the more I read, the more I see how the state and local guys were the biggest fuck-ups.
I’m pessimistic that we’ll learn anything from this disaster. Bad as it was, we’ve had hurricanes every freakin’ year, so it’s not like this was our first BBQ. The boxes might get shuffled around again, and some heads will roll, but we’ll become complacent again. We may fix a few things that were specific to this storm, but the next disaster will be completely different and will find new holes in the system.
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