Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Post on Disaster and the Political Response

Via Swopa on needlenose (and a chain of other bloggers) comes this decent piece by Dan Froomkin about the political response to the outraged criticism of the Bush administration.

It's pretty much what we all expected, and what Steyn exemplified below- blame everybody but Bush, and haul out any and all arguments that can be deployed to serve that goal, no matter how silly, in the hope that one will stick.

(That's about the only reason for the ridiculous "school bus" attack on Nagin... there were neither enough buses nor enough drivers to get anywhere near enough people out for it to matter, but it LOOKS bad.)

Funny thing? The media really does seem too ticked off to care. They've figured out, rightly enough, that any failures of the state and city officials doesn't excuse FEMA's poor response, and the whole "we can't get people in" excuse is countered not only by the horde of reporters there, but also the simple fact that the storm's effects were predictable, and FEMA's inability to manage worst-case scenarios (which this wasn't) can not be used to excuse said inability.

(The logistics were tough? Too bad, hurricanes do that.)

The hail of bullshit we're all getting drenched with from Rove and his online tools and hangers-on isn't going to get the Bushies out of this one. When even the SCLM is just wiping it away and continuing to ask unfortunate questions, the "blogosphere" isn't gonna do shit.

(Yes, I've had my fill of blog triumphalism, but that's a story for another day.)

Edit: Judging by what I'm seeing in the comments of this Kos entry, I may have spoken too soon, because it looks like the media is starting to push the "blame the mayor, blame the governor" claims.

Let's make no mistake about this. If the Bush administration walks away clean from this, there is no hope for the Union, because I cannot think of any worse situation being more poorly handled by the federal government than this.

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