GW Bush and Hurricane Katrina
* What: The first Global Warming disaster and Global Warming refugees in the US.
* The Body Count: 1836-3500 deaths in Louisiana and Mississippi. Many of the victims were elderly, overwhelmingly poor, and disproportionately Black and Latino, along with poor whites.
* Who else gets the blame:
* FEMA director Michael Brown became the most visible symbol of incompetence. Brown had little experience in disaster management, only having been an intern and assistant on a committee in a small town. He had primarily been commissioner of a racehorse owners association, and became the head of FEMA based on being a longtime friend of Bush's campaign manager Joe Albaugh. Only eight days into Katrina, Brown was replaced by Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen. Brown resigned four fays later, claiming he had become a scapegoat.
* In fact, the blame was well deserved. Brown directly told fire and rescue departments from outside the hurricane area not to help unless directly asked. Some city governments like Chicago's pledged help only to be turned away. Brown did not know about refugees trapped in the Superdome until told by the media, despite it being widely shown on TV, and ignorantly criticized trapped refugees as people who “chose not to evacuate.” Brown's emails showed him complaining about having to work hard and a casual attitude toward the disaster.
* Some pointed the blame at the Governor of Louisiana Blanco, Democrat, and the Mayor of New Orleans, also a Democrat, for their poor coordination with the federal government. Much of the accusations aimed at the two were clearly politically motivated, an attempt to shift blame away from Bush and Brown. Disaster relief is legally and for practical reasons a federal function, with local authorities only as assistants taking direction.
* Very conveniently, the same accusations were not immediately directed at the Governor of Mississippi, a Republican, Haley Barbour or the mayors of cities like Meridian, Natchez, or Gulfport, all also devastated by Katrina, and the mayors all Republican or nonpartisan. Barbour did receive praise for his handling of the evacuation, aggressively moving some people out of the path of the storm. Ironically, he is praised for doing what the federal government under Bush failed to do.
* Barbour also received enormous criticism after Katrina. While Louisiana was far more damaged by the storm, Mississippi received almost three quarters of all federal aid, clearly rewarded for him not criticizing Bush. Federal funds also seemed to be awarded to make Barbour look good if he ran for president. (He decided against it. His religious conservatism was jarring to most of the country.) Finally, awarding monies to Mississippi seemed like pure political favoritism, punishing Democratic Louisiana Governor Blanco for publicly criticizing Bush.
* Disaster aid, evacuation, and relief are all federal matters. State and local authorities quickly hand over jurisdiction and work in cooperation with the federal government. This had been done successfully many times before and since, most notably for Hurricane Sandy, when Democratic President Obama worked quite well with Republican Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie.
* Amusingly, some conspiracy theorists, including the Republican candidate for President, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, claimed Hurricane Sandy was part of a conspiracy to get Obama re elected. Some of the nuttier types even claimed Obama could control the weather. Pray for such people, and keep them away from sharp objects.
* Believe it or not, right wing talk radio and conspiracy theorists blamed the victims themselves. Racists like Rush Limbaugh put an enormous effort into smearing the victims as all criminals, savages, rapists, animals, and others who deserve to die, and the refugees as a threat to decent people. The internet was deluged for years with lurid mail forwards by the gullible, or racists asserting that Katrina refugees brought crime waves with them. These rumor played upon stereotypes of Blacks as inherently dangerous and more likely to be commit crimes. (More than two thirds of crimes in the US are committed by whites. More than three quarters of white crime victims are victimized by other whites.) Even former First Lady Barbara Bush repeated the rumors before apologizing.
* Mainstream media often pushed racist images as well, depicting the Superdome refugees as out of control and violent, falsely claiming Black gangs were attacking white neighborhoods. In fact, the opposite was true. White police in the area often closed off white neighborhoods, locking out minorities and preventing evacuation. In some cases the police attacked minorities unprovoked.
* While clearly not all of the deaths were caused by Bush and his administration's incompetence, most of them were. A more competent president and head of FEMA could and should have prevented many of these deaths, as well as property loss and long term economic damage. Bush's main guilt in Katrina involve two huge errors. Bush hired Michael Brown as head of FEMA with few qualifications. Most sensible people know you do not reward friends of friends with sensitive jobs where lives could be lost. You should not hire them period, in an ideal world. But if one must reward cushy prestige jobs, make them the Ambassador to Luxemburg or another position where they cannot do any harm.
* But not GW Bush. Brown, or “Brownie” was given one of the most sensitive positions requiring the greatest skill, or many people would die. Many did die, precisely because Brown, and Bush as well, did not know what they were doing. At a press conference, an out of touch and clueless Bush loudly praised Brown, “You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie!” The public reacted with horror. Conservatives and Republicans like commentator Fred Barnes were appalled as much as everyone else.
* The most memorable public reaction came from country music singers Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, who called the government response to Katrina, and Bush's in particular, “embarrassing,” “humiliating,” and even “bullshit.” “When you have people dying because they're poor and Black, or poor and white...that is the most wrong thing,” said McGraw when asked by the press. Both singers are from the areas most affected, and Hill publicly teared up as she described her anger over the loss of life.
* A comparison of the response to Hurricane Katrina to that of Hurricane Sandy shows the difference an efficient, more competent, and more compassionate response can make. Sandy was by some measures the more powerful of the two storms, and it hit a larger area and one more heavily populated, mostly New Jersey and New York compared to Katrina hitting primarily Louisiana and Mississippi.
* The death toll for Sandy was only 109, compared to 1,836 for Katrina. It is not reasonable to assume the death toll would be exactly the same had both hurricanes been dealt with by either competent or incompetent leaders. In fact, had Bush been president when Sandy hit, the death toll and economic damage likely would have been even higher than Katrina's, since the area has a higher population.
* The reverse is also true. Had a better president been on the job besides GW Bush, likely 1,700 dead or more, almost all of those killed by Katrina, would still have been alive after the storm. GW Bush and “Brownie” bear the direct responsibility for most, but not all, of the 1,836-3.600 deaths from Hurricane Katrina. “Heckuva job” indeed.
* Bush's incredible bumbling on Katrina played a direct role in Obama getting elected. Even many lifelong Republicans refused to vote for their party, instead voting for Obama, staying home on election day, or voting for a third party. The most lasting legacy of Bush's failures on Katrina is the devastation wrought on New Orleans, The city has yet to fully recover.
* Most of the victims were senior citizens who could not be evacuated. Over half were Black. Virtually all of them, Black, white, or Latino, were the poorest of the poor. In perhaps the most famous comment about Katrina, rapper Kanye West said at a benefit for the victims, “George Bush doesn't care about Black people.” Bush later said it was the worst day of his being president. This comment only further cemented Bush's reputation as remote and callous. Most Americans likely would have named the September 11 attacks, the start of the Iraq War, or Katrina itself.
* But West's claim about Bush was clearly inaccurate, though not entirely unfair. A more accurate statement would be, “George Bush doesn't know how to do his job, and Black, Latino, and white people died because of that.” There has never been evidence of GW Bush being a racist. Just the opposite, his actions on AIDS in Africa and Latin American immigration show him strongly opposed to prejudice.
* His party is another matter. Republican leadership and candidates have been pandering to racists since the 1960s, especially in the south. It is accurate to say that the great majority of American racists are Republicans. Obviously not all Republicans are racist. But perhaps as many as half are. And even the many non-racist Republicans include many who are dismissive of the damage done by racism, and willing to pander to or at least tolerate the huge numbers of racists in their midst. It was this party which was indifferent to aiding or rebuilding New Orleans, and its members on talk radio went out of their way to smear the mostly Black victims.
* No, Bush's guilt is largely a matter of pure incompetence as an administrator, not very different from the many failings he had in appointing people to administer Iraq, and indeed in prosecuting and planning the quagmire of the Iraq War. More than a few observers joked that Bush is not very intelligent. This is clearly false. He was quite skilled politically in pushing through the Iraq War over the objections of some Democrats and keeping the war going over the opposition of most of the American public. But on many matters Bush was clearly uninformed on, and worse, uninterested, his ignorance proved to be fatal to thousands of Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi.