The Katrina Effect

...The cold reception that met the President's proposed Social Security reforms added nothing to his luster...

...Now it will reopen in January instead of October...

...That is not to suggest the public and private aid flowing into the stricken region hasn't eased the immediate crisis, but they frequently create new problems...

...McCain's potential defection underscores the sense here of a Presidency teetering on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts...

...Katrina's impact will ripple through the regional and national economies for many months, if not years, to come...

...Or he could have stayed put at his Crawford ranch and acted as Commander in Chief from there...

...Clinton's former chief of staff, John Podestà, now president of the Center for American Progress, could have been drafting a statement for Bush II when he said, "We've got to think big and we've got to think in terms of serious reforms about the fundamental needs of the people...

...Nevertheless, it is a stretch to envision him remaking himself in the mold of FDR or LBJ...

...Two weeks passed before the President, now a frequent flyer to hurricaneravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, delivered a speech in New Orleans' largely spared French Quarter designed to recast his faltering image by invoking the hallmarks of the FDR and Lyndon B. Johnson Administrations: accurate accounts, compassion and confidence, resolve and responsibility...

...But the President's proposals face an even more serious threat on his Right flank...

...Since the United States has every reason to expect more disasters, natural and otherwise, Bush has a strong incentive to make good on his pledges...

...For hundreds of thousands of evacuees, the government would open tax-free "worker recovery accounts" of up to $5,000 a person for education, childcare and retraining...

...Federal funding to help the poor, for instance, often conflicts with bureaucratic rules that vary from state to state...

...In Republican cloakrooms there has been talk of what might politely be termed the undeserving poor, a conception tinged with racism and antithetical to the spirit of FDR's Great Depression initiatives...

...Before his French Quarter speech, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada urged a "Marshall Plan for the Gulf states...

...By sticking to his pre-Katrina script when the nation was focused on nature's devastation of the Gulf Coast, however, Bush dealt a heavy political blow to his already unraveling Presidency...

...Bush faced up to the "deep, persistent poverty in this region...

...Fresh Federal spending, coupled with billions in insurance payouts, is likely to spawn a selective boom in some sectors...

...We're going to end up with the highest deficit, probably, in the history of this country...

...As contracts involving huge sums of money are awarded without proper bidding or adequate accountability, relocated investigative reporters will surely relish the opportunity to pick up the paper trail...

...to build new housing, revive farmland, repair infrastructure, construct schools...

...Andrew J. Glass, a longtime NL contributor, is a veteran Washington obsenw...

...Before Katrina struck, the ongoing turmoil in Iraq was eroding faith in Bush's ability to govern...

...In troubled times voters tend to support Republican chief executives who convey an aura of stability and discipline...

...A 19th-century-style real estate lottery would provide Katrina's poorest victims free Federal land where they could rebuild their lost homes...

...Clearly, he should have flown back to Washington at once to convene an emergency meeting on how best to cope with the still unfolding disaster...

...An objection of a different sort was raised by Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who is pondering a run for the Presidency in 2008...

...President Ronald Reagan, in many ways Bush II's conservative role model, also made a habit of trotting out purloined Rooseveltian themes, despite their being at odds with his own ideology...

...The latter course might reap electoral benefits in 2006 from voters disgusted by an ineffectual Administration...

...forces in Iraq and Afghanistan...

...Meanwhile, to put a bipartisan stamp on the charity component of the relief effort, Bush reunited two former Oval Office occupants, Bill Clinton and George H. W Bush, who linked arms earlier this year to raise funds for tsunami victims...

...Built on high ground within the last year, it survived the flood but was ransacked by mostly African-American looters...

...He maintains conservatives want to "do whatever is necessary to address this national disaster...

...Banks will be posthurricane winners too, as they facilitate Federally guaranteed loans to devastated businesses and individuals...

...But for Reagan, whose poll numbers rarely flagged, this was mere window-dressing, perhaps tinged with a touch of nostalgia...

...Bush's recovery draft legislation does carry some Reaganesque economic baggage, but his new vision of the government's proper role is closerto that of progressive Democrats than of Republican fiscal conservatives...

...In Washington, though, the immense restoration project championed by the President threatens recent half-hearted Congressional attempts to rein in spending...

...Wall Street reacted swiftly...

...And he committed himself to marshaling "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen...

...He acknowledged the government's woeful lack of preparedness and pledged to determine what had gone wrong with its emergency response system...

...The scenes that emerged relentlessly on television—showing that both local and Federal officials were slow to come to grips with the calamity—may have left too many people with irredeemably negative feelings about the role of government in general and the Bush Administration in particular...

...It comes as a surprise, therefore, to hear Bush employ rhetoric echoing the New Deal and the Great Society—including a clarion call for racial justice more in line with the vision of Eleanor Roosevelt than her pragmatic husband...

...Well into the recovery, it was apparent the Federal government was still winging it when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced 200,000 special debit cards worth S2,000 each would be distributed to evacuees, and two days later had to summarily cancel the program...

...Moreover, the Democrats could justify turning against Bush's bold recovery program, estimated to cost over $200 billion, because it incorporates several private sector-friendly initiatives, such as tax breaks for entrepreneurs and school vouchers...

...Playing FDR The Katrina Effect By Andrew J. Glass Washington On the last day of August, as flood waters unleashed by Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, vacationing President George W. Bush flew from his Crawford, Texas, ranch to North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego...

...Bush's proposals include a "Gulf Opportunity Zone," allowing major tax breaks and other incentives to companies beginning anew amid the ruins...

...Those Presidents, Bush said, "understood that the sacrifices of Allied forces would mean nothing unless we used our victory to help the Japanese people transform their nation from tyranny to freedom...

...So families that received welfare in Louisiana may be ineligible for payments in Texas, where some were resettled on a quasivoluntary basis...

...Whether his promising an unprecedented amount of direct Federal aid can atone for the mix of indifference and incompetence that characterized his Administration's initial response to Katrina is open to question...

...It is not clear whether an administration so widely viewed as incompetent, hapless and weak will even get the chance to display its newfound Rooseveltian mettle...

...In the days after the hurricane struck, stocks of major construction firms and producers of building materials soared...

...As a rationale for withholding his backing, one GOP Congressional leader privately cited the Wal-Mart store in uptown New Orleans...

...With Bush seemingly tacking Left, Democratic leaders must decide whether to cooperate with him or to take advantage of his politically weakened state and thwart his plans...

...His long-planned trip, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender, was orchestrated to equate his helming the Iraq war with the victorious World War II leadership of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman...

...Bush has grasped the FDR mantle in a time of crisis, with his approval ratings dipping to 40 per cent...

...Then he adds: "We also have to be concerned about future generations of Americans...

...Prior to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, he confined himself to playing Commander in Chief of the democracy-spreading U.S...

...root[ed] in a history of racial discrimination" that was unmasked by the catastrophe...