Nicholas F. Benton:An 'Investigation?' We Saw it Live!Like “all the king’s men” in the Humpty Dumpty case, all the smokescreens, denials and counteroffensives in the world will not be able to put President Bush’s credibility back together again following the demonstration of his abject failure of leadership last week that let the Hurricane Katrina disaster swell into a still-unfolding human and national catastrophe of unparalleled proportions. Sorry, Mr. President, you were caught by live television cameras with your pants wrapped around your ankles for a worldwide audience of billions to see, thanks to an alert news media, first hand. You can’t undo that. Your worst nightmare actually happened. A real crisis requiring a real commander occurred. Stumbling around your ranch on yet another vacation, you were clueless. You were about as far from being prepared to act appropriately in the situation as the most zoned out, beer bellied backyard cookout aficionado in the land, and we all saw it. One of your White House predecessors coined a good phrase to sum up what he saw as his executive responsibility to the nation. “The buck stops here,” President Harry S. Truman intoned. He was right, and on this one, the buck stops with you, Mr. Bush. There were many things both in the lead up to and during the storm that you, and onlyyou, could and needed to do. And you didn’t, not by a long shot. The problem with George W. Bush is that he did not come to the presidency with the idea of actually leading the nation in mind. He came with the notion of implementing an agenda. It was an agenda designed up by his cronies calling for a “new American century” of unilateral global and resource domination and domestic deregulation, privatization and freedom from taxes for the rich, and even as the American public’s perception of his presidency has eroded to record low levels, he’s stuck with it. This agenda does not include any legitimate “homeland security” or domestic infrastructure maintenance except for the outsourcing of government operations wherever possible. The gaping holes in the system even years after 9/11 were cause for unceasing embarrassment, accented by the appointment of wholly unqualified political friends to top level slots. Then came Hurricane Katrina. Clearly, shortchanging on necessary improvements and manpower resources in the years leading up to the crisis contributed enormously to its impact. But there was plenty of advance warning that this hurricane could be the “big one” everyone who knows anything about New Orleans’ special vulnerabilities feared. At the point the mayor of New Orleans ordered a mandatory evacuation of his city the weekend before the storm hit, it was clear that an extraordinary emergency top-down command-and-control federal mobilization was called for. The president and only thepresident needed to be marshalling the considerable capacities of the nation’s crisis management and rescue at that very moment, providing photo ops while in consultations with key cabinet-level officials and echoing Mayor Ray Nagin’s desperate call for evacuation and preparation. This is what should have been done in the 48 hour period beforehand. This is not a question of “hindsight being 20-20.” This is what presidents are elected to do. But even with without this advance preparation, there was plenty the president and only the president needed to have done once the first word of the breech of the levees came shortly after midnight in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Once the breech occurred, the doomsday scenario was inevitable, engulfing an entire major American city. At that point, the president and only the president was required to declare a national emergency, calling forth the military, the national guard, and contacting key components of the national private sector, including commercial airline companies, trucking and cruise ship companies. Even private yacht and powerboat owners needed to be alerted. Lines of communication needed to be opened with the appropriate agencies of foreign nations willing to help. The president and only the president needed to order an override of every routine bureaucratic procedure that could hinder or complicate the ability to rescue and provide the basic needs to the victims of this disaster. Like Mayor Giuliani did after 9/11, the president needed to be on the scene, losing sleep and being personally engaged to address every hang-up and every unmet need. As hard as it is to imagine President Bush ever doing this, this indeed is what presidents are supposed to do. No need for an “investigation” of what went on. We all saw it with our own eyes, Mr. President. We all saw that you didn’t show up until Friday, and then just briefly. Before that, you weren’t there either in person, as a leader or in spirit. |
