My property flooded during Katrina. I’m the last person you need to lecture on this.
And I’m not saying that the government should have handed everyone a check (which they ended up doing anyway). What I am saying is that he should have shown more qualities of active leadership during this.
Every single time we’ve had a hurricane under Riley the governor has always managed to have these press conferences. He will come down to the coast and have press conferences with all of the local officials present and they will pre-empt pretty much all TV during the conferences and I think that at least for one Riley stayed in the region as it came in.
Where Bush failed in Katrina was not in as much of what he did but how he let himself be portrayed. Basically, he never appeared on top of things and that he has in common with Blanco and Nagin. Riley and Barbour on the other hand always appeared like they knew what they were doing from day one. That’s why both of them who had poll numbers sub 35 had huge bursts of popularity after it was all said and done.
Whatever..I wouldn’t of called on the govt to take care of me..just the type of person I am.
So his failure is not putting style over substance. Good to know. The appearance of doing something good is more important than actually doing something good.
Louisiana’s Governor, local mayors and the Parish leaders needed to look competent. The rest of us never saw anything except what the media wanted us to see. If we hadn’t remembered much earlier lessons about the Gulf, who would have even known Mississippi and other States were hit by Katrina?
Those twits in New Orleans were the worst: Dumping people into the SuperBowl, too late. (some of that might have been moderated if they’d made attempts to keep families and neighborhoods together and anyone had planned for the simple fact that first responders have families, too.) Letting the school buses flood rather than using them as they should have been used.
Under our Constitution, the President’s only recourse would have been equivalent to declaring Marshal Law.
The media made a circus and put George Bush in the center ring. However, it was not his job, as you describe in you post about Barbour and Riley.
How was Bush to order that when he didn't have the federal authority to do so? For a full week ahead of time, a Cat-5 hurricane was predicted for New Orleans. The local and state governments of Louisiana were told to start the emergency procedures, yet they refused. Bush was personally calling for those procedures to be implemented, but Nagin and Blanco refused.
Regarding the charges against Bush that he waited too long to fly down there, the day before he came that storm was still classified as a hurricane. That was going to be a logistics/security nightmare to put him on the ground in New Orleans the day after landfall was made.
However, when Bush did finally travel down there and land, he had Blanco on Air Force One demanding that she cede powers to the Feds so that FEMA could get in there. She again refused. Blanco had a mental breakdown on that jet, and the joint statements for the press had to be delayed due to her makeup being smeared from the tears.
Blanco could have deployed the National Guard ahead of time, but she refused. That's another area the press/liberals blamed on Bush, yet would have called for impeachment hearings if he would have illegally ordered the Guard down there.
I am not saying the feds didn't do things perfectly, but they had their hands tied until Blanco and company gave them the permission to do anything.
Blanco and Nagin are fortunate that the hurricane missed New Orleans for the most part. Mississippi wasn't as fortunate.