80% of the city of New Orleans evacuated before the storm.
Posted on 12/29/2008 8:54:24 PM PST by marshmallow
WASHINGTON – Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.
"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."
Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."
Their comments are a part of an oral history of the Bush White House that Vanity Fair magazine compiled for its February issue, which hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationally on Jan. 6. Vanity Fair published comments by current and former government officials, foreign ministers, campaign strategists and numerous others on topics that included Iraq, the anthrax attacks, the economy and immigration.
Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.
"It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let's face it, that's what he was — was going to be protected....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
“The problem is when the Dems came out in the aftermath and pinned this on Bush there were no Repubs that came out to counter these charges and put the blame back where it belonged directly on the Gov and Mayor.”
It all boils down to this White House having the worst communications effort I’ve ever seen from day 1. If ANY administration needed a “war room” to counteract liberal propaganda thrown at it, this was the one.
I call B.S.
They are (and have been) doing the same thing with Sarah Palin. Most people are stupid, if it doesn’t concern their new car or shopping this weekend they just don’t care. America is done...period. We will be just like any other 3rd world country in a few years. Obama being elected told me all I need to know about our future.
Sell your BS elsewhere.
Your analysis is great if you are nuts ....Amnesty as you call it meant nothing to anyone but the hard core fringes on this board...
And the ungrateful bastards are getting the wall /fence they wanted and still they bitch and moan
Here is what gets me about the Bush is dumb BS argument...Is GWs father dumb? is his mother dumb ? are all his brothers dumb? Is his wife dumb? no
It is absolutely absurd to think he comes from that group of people and is dumb .....I do think he hides behind a good old boy mask....but coming from Texas I can see where it comes in handy. In purely political terms Bush won more battles than he lost so I doubt his opponents really think he is dumb
If this were true you would put a name to these "people", or hint at who "me" is. But of course you're just lying as you only wanted to fecklessly malign Geo. Bush.
And who is 'dumb as a box of rocks'? Bush, or those who choose to live below sea level?
I believe Bush never recovered from some of his disloyal ex-aides.
Instead, he chose to accept the myth because of its pervasiveness. HUGE blunder...a symptom of his strategy to not fight back.
Fear not. You will witness Obama falling flat on his face in a similar or worse crisis. He will be the laughing stock of the world and will have nowhere to hide.
Katrina may have been bad for Bush on the national level, but in LA Blanco was replaced by Jindal and an even bigger surprise — William ‘cold cash’ Jefferson has been replaced in CD2 by Joseph Cao.
Yes, Nagin got reelected, but there is only so much that can be expected from a dependency city. No amount of MSM propaganda could hide the truth from the free people who lived thru it.
Very, very true.
80% of the city of New Orleans evacuated before the storm.
It was horrible PR wise though. It was one of those moments where I said to people this was it- a defining moment, at least in the eyse of the press and the public. He has had the worst luck. Katrina, 9/11, housing crash etc.
feast my my tagline, loser
I'm glad you brought up Camille for a little perspective on just how drastically catastrophic Camille was versus Katrina and how people responded to the two events, i.e., their vastly different expectations of what "aid" from 'big daddy gubment' meant.
I remember Camille vividly. Hurricane warnings came late - too late for some, and not at all for others. The amount of destruction was enormous. 70% of all taxable property in Pass Christian was lost; Plaquemines Parish in Louisiana was completely destroyed as were towns from Gulport to Biloxi and beyond. 27 miles of coast was scoured for several blocks inland, structures were just gone. Hundreds of bloated, drowned cattle floated in the bay, attracting sharks for weeks. Only one highway survived intact in Virginia; uprooted trees swept along by flashfloods acted as battering rams, taking out bridges and homes.
There was no Fema back then, but there was a Office of Emergency Preparedness, which coordinated some 25 agencies. Along the coast, initial assistance came mostly from the Red Cross shelters and DoD personnel stationed in the area, and neighbors helping each other. I remember the bridge between Ocean Springs and Biloxi ended up about half-a-mile out to sea, so the only way to get to Ocean Springs from Biloxi for many months was via a very crowded ferry. We were without electricity for at least two or three weeks and martial law prevailed (although there was very little looting). Noone expected special treatment.
I don't recall any bellyaching against the President during the aftermath of Camille - people pulled together and just dealt with it. In fact, the Only bellyaching I ever heard was against the Red Cross for charging cleanup volunteers 10cents for a lousy cup of hot coffee!
People received rebuilding loans (which, along with insurance, took months to get), but nobody was handing out free money for the asking and nobody expected it - one was expected to cash in their US savings bonds, and use their own savings - you got food, water, blankets, clothing and shoes, and a RedCross shelter cot if you needed a place to stay. A few lucky ones got government trailers once miles of roads were cleared; the rest of us just made do. I guess it was just a simpler, prouder, more self-reliant time back then.
best regards, blu
from: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/camille/report.html
"The wide range of possible landfall locations greatly complicated preparation efforts. Figure 3 shows the forecast displacement errors. By official estimates, 81,000 out of 150,000 people in the evacuation area were moved to safety..."
"... messages coming from different sources led to dire consequences and likely resulted in many misinformed residents remaining in their homes when they should have evacuated...Wilkinson and Ross (1970) provides an example where a “highly emotional plea to get out" was being issued over Biloxi television Sunday, as a newscaster in New Orleans was reported to have read only the general forecast and then returned to broadcasting music. Another example from Wilkinson and Ross (1970) tells of an out-of-town radio station re-running earlier bulletins, even after new ones had been broadcast over another station. "
Storm waters rose to 22.6 feet at Pass Christian, 17 feet behind Pass Christian, 21.6 feet at Long Beach, 21 feet at Gulfport, 19.5 feet at Biloxi, and 15 feet on the Biloxi Bay (USACE 1970) (Figure 4).
"The Department of Defense contributed greatly to the relief process, with a total of 16,500 military personnel from numerous divisions (OEP 1969, p. 9)... Battalions cleared 575 miles of roads and removed more than 37,000 tons of debris (OEP 1969, p. 10).
"The Department of the Treasury responded quickly to the financial concerns and demands of the communities affected by the hurricane. Emergency offices, at a cost of $20,000 (1969 dollars), were established to disburse checks to those receiving rehabilitation loans. Through December 10, 1969, 75,000 checks were delivered, totaling $25 million (1969 dollars) in rehabilitation loans (OEP 1969, p. 5). "[BluNote: bear in mind, the hurricane occurred Aug 17th, so some waited up to 4 months for loans]
It was a tipping point all right - it was the point where many of us saw the liberal Dubya come out. He caved to the left-wing media by coddling New Orleans, instead of standing up to the crybabies that whined about those "poor people" that decided to stay behind and loot while the wise ones got out of town.
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