Hurricane Katrina “was not a normal hurricane and the normal
disaster relief system was not equal to it,” President Bush said
last night. But after a slow start, the President has proven that
he is more than equal to the political tempest that landed ashore
with Katrina.
Last week in this space I called on
the President to fire FEMA head Michael Brown and give a speech
with plenty of specifics about the state of the rescue operation
and how problems are being fixed. Now Brown is gone, and Bush has
given a speech that did everything it needed to and more. Even with
the handicap of having no live audience with which to interact,
Bush gave one of the four or five most effective speeches of his
presidency last night.
It was a speech crafted to reassure listeners that good
things are happening despite the hardship, from the anecdotes of
heroism and courage at the beginning to the ending metaphor of a
jazz funeral, where the band breaks out of a dirge and “into a
joyful ‘second line’ symbolizing the triumph of the spirit over
death.” Bush thus placed himself in sharp relief against the
negative and unpleasant post-Katrina political atmosphere.
The speech had some nice moments of rhetorical jujitsu, where
Bush took the content of criticisms hurled at him in the wake of
the hurricane and used them to his advantage. The critics say the
President is ultimately responsible for failures; Bush not only
agrees, he deftly transmutes that responsibility into credit for
responsive action:
When the federal government fails to meet such an
obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and
for the solution. So I have ordered every Cabinet secretary to
participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to
the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane
Katrina. We are going to review every action and make necessary
changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of
nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our
people.
The critics play the race card in a nasty way; Bush plays it
right back at them in a positive way, grabbing the high ground:
When communities are rebuilt, they must be even better
and stronger than before the storm. Within the Gulf region are some
of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us
saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in
this region as well. And that poverty has roots in a history of
racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the
opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty
with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from
yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.
When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new
businesses, including minority-owned businesses, along those
streets. When the houses are rebuilt, more families should own, not
rent, those houses. When the regional economy revives, local people
should be prepared for the jobs being created. Americans want the
Gulf Coast not just to survive, but to thrive, not just to cope,
but to overcome. We want evacuees to come home for the best of
reasons, because they have a real chance at a better life in a
place they love.
Bush went on to make several somewhat gimmicky proposals: an
entrepreneur-friendly “Gulf Opportunity Zone,” “Worker Recovery
Accounts” of up to $5,000 that evacuees can use for job training
and education or child care, and an Urban Homestead Act to give
federal land away to low-income individuals who can build homes
with either a loan or charity. What the President is doing is
inflecting Clinton-style microinitiatives with an Ownership Society
flavor. Whether or not that’s good policy, it’s almost certainly
good politics.
After the speech ended, ABC provided a scene of wonderful high
comedy, with reporter Dean Reynolds interviewing evacuees outside
the Astrodome and repeatedly getting the “wrong” answers delivered
in the almost musical accent of black New Orleans. Do you think the
President was sincere? “Yes.” Did you hear anything you didn’t
believe? “No, I didn’t.” One woman not only declined to criticize
the President, she forcefully argued that state and local
authorities deserve the lion’s share of the blame for not acting
long before the feds could be expected to arrive, invoking the
famous unused buses.
Poor Reynolds, caught in a white liberal nightmare where the
black people refuse to follow the script. But it’s no surprise that
Bush won the evacuees over. It was, as one woman put it, “a well
fine speech.”
