In the sporting world, there are good players and there are
great players.
Good players excel in the early moments of games, shining well before crunch time begins.
Great players turn it on when it counts most, coming through in the contests' closing seconds - when games are truly on the line, when the difference between winning and losing, leading and failing is razor thin.
It's easy to be president when no one's watching. It's easy to steer the ship when the sailing is smooth. It's easy to be President Bush when your day consists of staged photo opportunities and carefully crafted appearances.
But, now that the game is on the line, now that Hurricane Katrina has left much of the Gulf Coast destroyed and her residents dead, dying or homeless, Bush is failing when he is needed most.
Listening to the voices coming from the Gulf Coast, it is clear that many aren't happy with the slow federal response. CNN correspondent Chris Lawrence told Aaron Brown that police were telling him they were overwhelmed and wanted a military response. Jefferson Parish emergency operations chief Deano Bonano blamed the war in Iraq for the lack of armed National Guardsmen helping on the scene. "I don't know if they have the manpower to send us," Bonano
said.
Think those reports are limited to reporters and flustered local officials? Here's what one Guardsman in New Orleans told the Washington Post:
"This is mass chaos," said Sgt. Jason Defess, 27, a National Guard military policeman who had been stationed on a ramp outside the Superdome since Monday. "To tell you the truth, I'd rather be in Iraq," where he was deployed for 14 months, until January. "You got your constant danger, but I had something to protect myself. [And] three meals a day. Communications. A plan. Here, they had no plan."
It's no better in Mississippi, either, the
Philadelphia Inquirer reported:
"We're not getting any help yet," said Joe Boney, battalion chief of the Biloxi Fire Department. "We need water. We need ice. I've been told it's coming, but we've got people in shelters who haven't had a drink since the storm."
One former FEMA official - in the Bush administration - bemoaned the shifted priorities:
"What you're seeing is revealing weaknesses in the state, local and federal levels," said Eric Tolbert, who until February was FEMA's chief of disaster response. "All three levels have been weakened. They've been weakened by diversion into terrorism."
[snip]
"A lot of good was done [in prior disaster planning], but it just wasn't finished," said Tolbert, who was the disaster chief for the state of North Carolina. "I don't know if it would have saved more lives. It would have made the response faster. You might say it would have saved lives."
Said Pascagoula, Mississippi, resident Steve Loper, "We're lost. We have no direction, no leadership. People are in bad trouble."
In response to Bonano's statements on CNN, Brown said, "Someday we'll know for sure where the truth of all that lies." Bullshit. We know now that drastic failings in leadership have worsened the disaster that followed Katrina. Shifting funds. Shifting manpower. Shifting priorities. What we're seeing now is a direct result of that failure to lead, of Bush's failure.
When Bush took to the airwaves yesterday, he delivered a terrible speech, a speech the New York Times called "one of the worst speeches of his life." Bush's only success came in overwhelming the audience with numbers - numbers that, while impressive, represent assistance that, for the most part, hasn't reached the affected area yet.
Further, never once during the entire short speech did Bush ask Americans to make a sacrifice. Never once did he mention conservation - in any form. Never once did he ask anyone to do more than donate to relief efforts. What he did say, however, was that it was hard work to operate an oil refinery. While his administration will bend over backwards to get oil refinement and distribution back to pre-Katrina levels, it is apparent to many that the delays in on-the-ground assistance are having disastrous effects.
"And we're just starting," Bush said after running down a long list of figures. My question is this, Mr. President: Why are you saying that three days into the disaster? What took you so long? Why were you fiddling while Rome burned?
What hasn't been widely reported is that yesterday's presidential update began minutes late thanks to the threat of rain. I hope the irony of that fact is lost on nobody.