My problem with Bush -- and here, I do indeed address Bush individually, as a guy -- is that during the time that the crisis was developing, from Monday to Friday, he never seemed to experience any actual sense of urgency as a result of the simple fact that people were, minute by minute and hour by hour, dying.
Let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he was being prevented from acting by bureaucracy and the sheer magnitude of the situation. Where are the stories of how he was in his office freaking the fuck out because there were tens of thousands of Americans trapped without food and water? Where's the story of how he ripped a strip off of somebody, demanding to know what the holy hell the holdup is getting water and food to those people?
I want to hear about how he was demanding that extraordinary steps be taken. I want to hear about how he sent his lawyers into a room -- he had four days, you know -- and demanded that they come back in an hour with a plan for him to send the Marines into New Orleans with 100 trucks of food and water, posse comitatus or not.
Say what you want about the mayor and governor -- those people were in pain. They saw people suffering and dying and took it as a given that it couldn't go on that way, and that if it did, government's response would be a failure. The mayor cried at the top of his lungs for help. I want to hear that Bush cried at the top of his lungs for help. I want to hear that he called every corporate hotshot he's befriended in the last twenty years and told them that if they ever wanted another invitation to the White House for dinner, they were going to pony up a fat wad of cash to the Red Cross, and they were going to do it yesterday.
No matter whose fault the slow relief effort was, the fact of the matter is that these are Americans, and this is their president, and the fact that they were homeless, starving, dying
of thirst, and deprived of medication never once seemed to actually bother him.
Read the whole thing.
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