First, this
editorial in today's
NYT (diaried by Volvo Liberal
here). Then, I ran across
this article, whose title, "Hard New Test for President" not-so-subtly invokes the "it's hard work bein' preznit" complaints from the fall debates, while the content paints a portrait of a not-ready-for-primetime leader.
This leads me to the question: has the Times previously milquetoast coverage of the Bush Administration reached a tipping point?
Summary and conjecture after the break...
After initially stumbling through that disorienting day almost exactly four years ago, Mr. Bush entered what many of his aides believe were the finest hours of his presidency. But unlike 2001, when Mr. Bush was freshly elected and there was little question that the response would include a military strike, Mr. Bush confronts this disaster with his political capital depleted by the war in Iraq.
Even before Hurricane Katrina, governors were beginning to question whether National Guard units stretched to the breaking point by service in Iraq would be available for domestic emergencies. Those concerns have now been amplified by scenes of looting and disorder. There is also the added question of whether the Department of Homeland Security, designed primarily to fight terrorism, can cope with what Mr. Bush called Wednesday "one of the worst natural disasters in our country's history."
All this has inextricably linked Mr. Bush's foreign agenda, especially Iraq, to the issue of how well he manages the federal response to the monumental problems in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
These are some harsh words within the first four paragraphs of this analytical piece. Reading between the lines, this is what I see: Bush's response to 9/11 was given the benefit of the doubt, and he pursued a course of action that was supported with what can almost be regarded as near unanimity. What Republican's call his shining moment of leadership was simply doing what most people agreed was the right thing. And according to the editorial, Bush has emphatically not been a leader during this crisis.
To defend the president, the Times quotes Joseph M. Allbaugh, "one of Mr. Bush's closest friends and his first head of FEMA:"
"If anyone is telling you that Iraq is getting in the way, well that's hogwash," Mr. Allbaugh said...
Mr. Bush's instinctive response to such moments, his longtime aides and friends say, is to set up measurements to determine whether his efforts are adequately addressing a problem. "He likes being a hands-on manager," said Mr. Allbaugh. "He wants numbers, he wants to be able to show that the ball is moving down the field." That was evident Wednesday in the Rose Garden, when Mr. Bush started ticking off statistics on the number of people rescued, the numbers of meals-ready-to-eat that have been delivered, the number of people already in shelters.
It is reminiscent of how Mr. Bush has argued that progress is being made in Iraq. But as the administration has learned in Iraq, the imagery of violent chaos, repeated over and over, can undercut even the most frequently cited statistics.
Ouch. The image I'm confronted with is a not-so-overly-curious Dutchboy Bush trying to plug a 300 foot levee breach with his finger. A response so detached that the
Times editorial noted that it was "an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end." This is nothing, however, compared to the next bit of spin:
"The great thing about this president is that he doesn't try to use tragedy to gain immediate attention for himself," said Bob Martinez, a former governor of Florida who has endured his share of hurricanes and other disasters. "He talks to those with knowledge, and then he acts."
Say what? Now, let's make sure we have this straight: chumming around with John McCain, attending canned townhall meetings to cheerlead his proposed dismantling of Social Security, and rocking out with a music star was Bush's way of not trying to use tragedy to gain immediate attention for himself? That's 100%, unadulterated bullshit. The actions of the president yesterday were a colossal
failure of leadership.
So now for the $60K question: Can we expect the Times to continue their coverage of the Bush Administration in a more critical vein? Today's article and editorial mark a drastic shift in tone from the paper which lead the cheerleading for Iraq, and has been eerily quiet with regards to the DSM and Rovegate (save the self-righteous "Free Judy Miller" polemics). My thinking is that the same set of priorities that led to the underfunding of programs to secure New Orleans from catastrophic flooding in the event of storm like Katrina are depriving New York City from the resources necessary to prevent another (potentially more dangerous) terrorist attack, or react quickly to such an attack. The scenes of flooding swiftly trigger thoughts of the slow-motion catastrophe of a chemical or radiological attack in Times Square.
The House of Sulzberger is seeing the reflection of its past and future in the images of destruction being recorded on the Gulf Coast - a past from which we should have learned and a future which looks increasingly compromised. Is it enough to force them to recognize how dangerous the Bush Administration is to the health and security of their fellow citizens and to use the power at their disposal to hold this adminisration accountable?