Today, March 22nd, Frank Rich asks:
Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived?
A CHARMING visit with Jay Leno won’t fix it. A 90 percent tax on bankers’ bonuses won’t fix it. Firing Timothy Geithner won’t fix it. Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts, his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed. It would be foolish to dismiss as hyperbole the stark warning delivered by Paulette Altmaier of Cupertino, Calif., in a letter to the editor published by The Times last week: "President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived."
On Thursday, March 19th Ken Blackwell said this:
Candidate Barack Obama ran criticizing the former administration, and often invoking Hurricane Katrina as an example of government failure and a failure of leadership.
Well, now President Obama has his own Katrina.
March 17th, Paulette Altmaier has an LTE published in the NYT - this is where Rich says he got the phrase for his op-ed today. Who is Paulette Altmaier? A Republican and a VP at Cisco Systems.
Now, in her LTE, Paulette claims to be an Obama voter. I don't see any contributions to Democrats though - not in her entire history of donations.
Two days later, Ken Blackwell picks up the talking point and decides to run with it. Here's how his Townhall piece ended:
And just as former President George Bush had his point man in Katrina, Michael Brown, so President Obama has his point man in Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
OMG! Isn't this convenient! There's a video saying just that:
The person who created the video has a blog and they post under the name, Cuffy Meigs. Are you surprised to learn that Cuffy Meigs is a character from Atlas Shrugged? I'm not.
But wait, this is strange...how could the AIG bonuses be Obama's "Katrina moment" when he already had his Katrina moment all the way back in September of 2008?
Maybe you remember that day? Sept. 24th? When then President Bush held a meeting about the economic crisis at the White House? Hugh Hewitt breaks it down for us:
Today was Obama's Katrina moment and an example of great leadership by John McCain. This contrast was telling and will matter.
Obama's complaint about the debate postponement made him look exceptionally petty given his refusal to debate all summer long. Obama's reversal suggests he did not understand the seriousness of the moment and was pursuing a purely political approach to the crisis.
John McCain, by contrast, acted with speed and resolution. McCain did not wait to see which way the polls were trending and he did what he has often done over the years --demanding what he saw was necessary action and appealing for bipartisan support. I have opposed some of these calls in the past, but today's call was clearly the right thing to do.
Oh, if only we'd elected John McCain! He would have known exactly how to react to this economic crisis!! His Treasury Secretary would have been teh awesome!! It would have been Phil Gramm! This Phil Gramm. You know, nicknamed Foreclosure Phil.
Hugh Hewitt and Ken Blackwell would have much preferred Treasury Secretary Phil Gramm, the guy who really created this entire crisis. Let's put him in charge of fixing it up! Much better than choosing someone like Geithner:
Mr. Geithner has spent most of his career managing government responses to financial crises, from the 1990s bailouts of Mexico, Indonesia and Korea, to the debt-market meltdown that has brought Wall Street to its knees this year.
...
In March, before the financial crisis had even claimed its first major victim, Mr. Geithner attributed the market turmoil to a combination of market forces and incentives created by policy and regulatory decisions. He said the U.S. government needed to make broad changes to its supervisory structure "to address the vulnerabilities in our financial system revealed by this crisis."
Mr. Geithner was one of the first officials to warn about a financial instrument, known as a credit-default swap, which investors buy to protect against defaults on corporate and other types of debt.
Everyone make sure you have your Republican talking points down so you can repeat them ad nauseum:
The economic crisis is now and has been (at least since September 2008) Obama's "Katrina moment". Geithner is the wrong person for the job because he has experience managing responses to economic crises. What we really need is Phil Gramm! And hey, if you're not happy with Phil Gramm, we definitely need Paul Krugman instead - because he has TONS of experience managing financial crises in multiple countries around the world and has stated repeatedly that he isn't interested in the job.
So Elise, what you're saying is - you totally agree with Obama's every decision? That would be a big fat no. I despise Larry Summers. He should have never been given any position. I think Geithner has made mistakes and I don't trust Ben Bernanke. However, I also think Geithner deserves some time. It took Phil Gramm and other Republicans more than 30 years to destroy the economy. It's going to take more than 8 weeks to clean that mess up - especially when he's got limited staff to help him in his work.
It's possible to be frustrated with what you see as mistakes or failures without grabbing a pitchfork and repeating Republican talking points. THAT is my overall message here. I don't ever expect to come to DailyKos and find Ken Blackwell's talking point being AGREED with and recommended by Democrats without any question as to where that meme came from.
As to whether or not there's any "truth" to the metaphor? No, there isn't.
President Bush's response to Katrina was first to ignore it and then to respond ineffectually and with callousness towards human life. He didn't want to pay for rebuilding. He didn't want to pay for cleanup. He wanted to play guitar and have birthday cake with John McCain. A city was destroyed as the result of his callousness.
President Obama inherited this economic crisis (one that Bush tried to ignore - obviously he learned nothing from Katrina) and has made every effort to help the failing economy. He passed the stimulus bill, there's an economic stability package on the way, and there will likely be more stimulus later on this year. His budget also has stimulus aspects to it - a reform of the health care system, etc. Do I think every one of these plans is perfect? No. I don't. But I also don't think Obama's response to the economic crisis in any way compares to President Bush's Katrina response.
This was Bush's response to Katrina:
This was Obama's response to the economic crisis:
"This is no longer just a Wall Street crisis. It's an American crisis, and it's the American economy that needs this rescue plan," he said. He called on members of both parties in Congress to step up and come to agreement on a bailout and to move forward.
"Every American should be outraged that an era of greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street and Washington has led us to this point, but now that we are here, the stability of our entire economy depends on us taking immediate action to ease this crisis," Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton said in a press statement the same day.
Obama boldly stated, "To all Americans, I say this: If I am president of the United States, this rescue plan will not be the end of what we do to strengthen this economy. It will only be the beginning."
AARP.org Obama Promises Quick Response to Economic Crisis
Obama Tries to Build Bipartisan Support for Stimulus
Obama's $275 Billion Plan to Stem Home Foreclosures
Barack Obama refuses to rule out second stimulus package
Obama's budget
Obama regroups, fine tunes financial overhaul:
"I realize there are those who say these plans are too ambitious to enact," Obama said in his weekend radio and Internet address. "To that I say that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. I didn't come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation — I came here to solve them."
In other words - if these first attempts don't bring us out of the economic crisis, there will be other attempts. Barack Obama isn't capable of having a "Katrina moment" - he's not George Bush - no matter how much Ken Blackwell wishes he were.