Bush bungled Katrina crisis, say Britons

Times Online ^

[jmc1969]

AN overwhelming majority of Britons believe that President George W Bush has mismanaged the response to Hurricane Katrina, a Sunday Times poll has found. Fully 86% of people said his handling of the crisis was “bad” or “very bad”, while 70% said he was a generally incompetent president.

By almost three to one, 63% to 23%, people think the response to the hurricane would have been speedier and more effective if most victims had been white and middle class. By 67% to 19% they think race and class divisions in America are as bad as ever.

The poll of a representative sample of 1,856 adults, carried out on September 8-9 by YouGov, the online pollsters, is the first major test of UK public opinion on the crisis.

The poll uncovers deep hostility to Bush; 57% agree and 23% disagree that he is “one of the worst presidents America has ever had”. By 66% to 18% they think he is generally “not trustworthy”, and by 68% to 21% that he is “not really concerned about the fate of ordinary people”.

The disaster has also hit America’s reputation more generally. By 63% to 20%, people said the Katrina aftermath and the Iraq violence showed America is “losing the ability to organise and run things”.

[NZerFromHK]

You are lucky that you have choices to read, even though the Daily Telegraph is not as conservative as I hope. The UK Independent is the parent for our own New Zealand Herald, officially the Auckland daily paper but virtually the national paper as well. Since it was bought by the INM it has turned sharply to the Left that it becomes quite sickening to read.

The paper actually encourages a left-wing foreign policy, a virulently anti-American stance so extreme that makes the New York Times read like Mark Steyn, politicslly correctness at home, socialist economy patronage at home but encourage free trade with all the shady Third world countries, and support Third World elites in power. So much so that I have given up reading the Labour O'Herald (named by NZPundit because of its Irish ownership and because it is the voice of the leftist Labour Party).

[kingsurfer]

You are lucky the Guardian did not buy it, they are marginally worse. I have read both papers and found the Independent at least had some good travel pages. The Guardian really is toilet paper.