You aren't telling me anything that hasn't been widely publicised on the issue. Here's where the rubber meets the road- can you imagine any other president in our lifetime doing nothing while watching that mayhem? Can you even imagine the US taking that long to respond to our own citizens?
Oh, I can imagine some other presidents popping up wherever a TV camera might appear and giving us the usual windy orations. But actually doing something? I can't think of who would have done anything useful, or what it might have been.
Specifically, that is, rather than a diffuse demand that somebody "do something!!!!" But this particular confluence of three factors probably hasn't ever happened before -
1. A mayor who would actually fiddle while his city is approached by an obvious problem (it's not like nobody's ever heard of a Gulf hurricane before). Even better, it was a problem which he could actually watch on satellite while it happened;
2. An obstructionist, dithering governor who apparently won't so much as fart unless she can find a way to get somebody else to pay for it;
and 3. A president who will, automatically, be bitterly denounced for whatever he does
or doesn't do. Which exacerbates (1) and (2), as both know they can fall down flat on their jobs, and Bush will be blamed,
no matter what.
Given the situation with the mayor and the governor, and given that Bush just
might be justified in his apparent belief that the federal system is not something to be trashed casually, he
did do something, and maybe the best thing possible in those circumstances. The two Marine amphibious assault ships, the
Guadalcanal and the
Iwo Jima - the ones with the on-board hospital facilities, the huge kitchens, the fresh-water generators, and the helicoptors and search & rescue facilities - which arrived immediately behind the storm front probably weren't there by accident. Coast Guard S&R put in a significant appearance too. These boats and helicopters are all under federal control. The Gulf was the only avenue of approach which couldn't be blocked by the governor and the federal system. Pretty good thinking on somebody's part - I don't know whose, but it was probably somebody at federal level.
Of course, Bush could have tried to kick Blanco and Nagin's butts into gear before the storm actually hit. But he did that. The next criticism would be that he should have kicked them earlier, and harder. Maybe he should have.
Herbert Hoover might have done more - probably the best organizer who's ever sat in the Oval Office. But he died in the '60s. And I don't think even he could have done anything with Nagin and Blanco. And, as a pretty strong beliver in the federal system, I don't think that he would have thought it appropriate to just brush them aside. Long before my day, in any case. The overbearing Johnson might have "persuaded" both of them to stop clowning around. Maybe. No other president would have done much of anything so far as I can see.
