In all honesty, the conservative argument about the Federal response to Hurricane Katrina is somewhat persuasive. Relative to the extent of the damage and compared to responses to other hurricanes, it does appear the Federal government has, in many respects, been kicking ass and taking names. Also, the more I learn about what happened it appears the local and state government response was pretty well hosed up! None of this matters however because the political fortunes of President Bush will never be the same.
President Bush is a lame-duck with approval ratings only slightly higher than Nixon's at roughly the same point in the second term. He may actually be the most unpopular president ever, at least in the history of polling on such matters. Nobody - except die hard, turn-the-clock-back-to-the-Robber-Baron-era wing nuts - is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about Katrina.
Think of Katrina as Bush's Tet offensive.
The Tet offensive was a military defeat for the North Vietnamese. They were decimated by the eventual overwhelming American response. The American military kicked butt and pushed them back. Ultimately, however, it didn't matter.
To this day people draw the wrong conclusions about Tet. Many people (more so on the left than the right, perhaps) think the North Vietnamese won, that the US was defeated or at least suffered an unrecoverable military setback that lead to our eventual withdrawal. They are wrong, of course.
Those on the right tend to be correct on the facts about Tet but unfailingly draw the wrong lesson from what happened. The reason public support for the war in Viet Nam began to evaporate after Tet wasn't because we lost or that the North bested us on the battlefield. We know they didn't.
The American public gave up on the Viet Nam war because they absorbed several years of President Johnson and the Pentagon telling them about the war and the supposed upcoming eventual inevitable victory (e.g., "light at the end of the tunnel") and concluded it was bullshit. The public decided their leaders fed them too much crap about how we were defeating an enemy who just mounted a huge offensive in every province of the country. It didn't matter that we drove them back. People decided their leaders could no longer be trusted to tell them the truth and withdrew their support. That's the real lesson of Tet and it's quite simple.
How does this relate to George Bush? If I have to explain...
Nevertheless, here goes.
Since 9/11, President Bush has portrayed himself as a strong leader capable of dealing with the threats facing us especially terrorism. He got elected last November because he convinced enough people that he would do a better job of keeping us safe, that he would take the fight to the enemy by "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Now, after Katrina, (and I hate to be so trite) the emperor has no clothes. Old George Lame-Duck Pinocchio Bush is naked.
The American public is beginning to see Bush as he truly is and what his policies represent. Michael "Heck of a Job" Brown is the tip of the iceberg in terms of how Bush governs. The incompetence and cronyism speak quite loudly for themselves. People see the lousy initial response, the confused chain of command, the five week vacation, the additional lies ("nobody expected the levy to break"), and the opportunism of former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh. As in 1968, they are beginning to realize the man in charge hasn't been truthful and really doesn't know what he's doing. George's credibility is never going to be the same and I haven't even included any discussion of Iraq.
So say good bye to George Bush, the lame-duck son-of-a-bitch! It's just too damn bad we don't have a parliamentary system so we could get rid of him with a vote of no confidence. It's certain now that the small group of people who still do have confidence in him is dwindling daily.