It seems a little sick and wrong to analyze the politcs of this, but I think it's very interesting.
First, almost to a person in the media, the journalists on the ground are really talking about poverty. We must use this to open up an important discussion on poverty. This is something that we have advantages of and the fact that we saw actual groups of people is a moving and disturbing image. We saw what 30% of a city in poverty looks like and they all weren't tucked away either in their homes or serving us when we visited New Orelans. This shouldn't be labled as a political issue, but a human issue. And quite frankly it is.
Second, I just heard Clinton and Bush I. Interesting dynamic. If you don't think that the Democrats are trying to grasp on to this issue, you are wrong. First, I believe most Democrats don't want to jump out and start playing politics because there are so many people in trouble. But today Clinton talked about how the estate tax discussion should be stopped and how it's possible that there should be hearings into what happened. He also talked about how FEMA should be funded and organized (as did James Lee Witt yesterday). He talked aobut how he had started the process to strengthen the levees in his last years in office, but he didn't kow what had happened. He was doing this in front of his good friend Bush I who had said that the president had done a good job.
Third, I think we're going to hear a lot how New York and Rudy handled things during 9/11 and compare that to the local and state gov't in LA. I think it's important to remember that in NY (and it was so awful) people could go home and watch TV and figure things out. An entire city wasn't completely shut down. People had ways to figure out what was going on in their city and that means a whole lot. I think there's plenty of blame to go around with the govenor and the mayor, but to compare it to New Orleans would be a mistake. Both horrible diasters, but different dynamics.
Finally, it's interesting to see how potential 2008 Republicans are responding to the federal response. Weld in Mass, said it was terrible. Hagel has commented on how bad it was. Even Frist said that the response was bad. It appears that these potential canidates are betting that the blame will stick with the Federal government.