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Even when President George W. Bush stood in New Orleans' Jackson Square last September 15 and promised to television cameras
that he would "do what it takes" in the wake of Katrina to bring back New Orleans from its undeserved ordeal, anybody
could see in his face that it wasn't going to happen.
Do you remember last fall's photograph -- it's been brought back, this time on the front page of the January 28, 2006
Washington Post -- of a flustered-looking Bush at his New Orleans podium, his eyebrows feebly arched in his trademark "uh,
what do I do now?" look, his eyes hollow as usual, one side of his mouth crimped in faux sincerity as he bleated his
belated pledge? One look at that photo, then or now, and the reason why so many of the citizens of New Orleans have been left
to languish in the mud is as clear as the look on the President's face.
The Post, to its credit, has in its January 28 story revisited Bush's Katrina promise, and the lack of subsequent action.
The story's news peg is that it is now State of the Union season -- one of the times when the mainstream press considers it
fair to compare a president's words with his actual record. Bush's Katrina stats, as the Post reports, are dismal:
"The problems include the slow federal cleanup of debris in Mississippi and Louisiana; a lack of authority for Bush's
hand-picked recovery coordinator, Donald E. Powell; the shortage and poor quality of housing for evacuees; and federal constrictions
on reconstruction money and where coastal communities can rebuild. ...With the onset of the hurricane season just four months
away, there is no agreement on how to rebuild New Orleans, how to pay for that effort or even who is leading the cross-governmental
partnership, according to elected leaders."
The Post story goes on to catalogue, in a carefully-itemized chart, the President's words versus the reality of deeds
on a long list of specifics: making needed gasoline pipeline repairs, meeting the urgent needs of those left homeless, getting
people out of shelters, renting apartments for evacuees, bringing in mobile homes, rebuilding health care systems for residents,
working in partnership with affected localities, creating Worker Recovery Accounts to help victims regain livelihoods, passing
an Urban Homesteading Act. In nearly every case, federal action either falls far short of Bush's pledge or is simply nonexistent.
Take it as a sign of the degree of insider shock over this Administration's laggardly performance that even nationally
prominent Republicans are quoted in the Post story as openly criticizing the federal response to Katrina, as have other Republicans
in other media for months.
But any of we voters could have seen this, as I've said, in the President's face on September 15. His visage betrayed
the same blank wall of feigned concern for the vulnerable that his Administration has displayed since its very first days.
When it came to the needs of constituencies such as the thousands of car-less, money-less Democratic (or non-) voters stranded
in New Orleans on the eve of the flood, this President's team had -- in the words chosen by Dick Cheney to explain his Vietnam
draft-dodging -- "other priorities."
There is a belief, in some quarters, that the underlying problem here is an active, conscious racism on the part of the
Administration. Among the Cro-Magnons and 1950s throwbacks who make up much of this Administration's top tier, I am sure that
such sentiments exist. But the larger dynamic, I suspect, is the obsessively myopic focus of this hard-right crew on the narrow
constituencies it embraces rather than its malevolent attention toward those it doesn't. The massive Republican electoral
sabotages in Florida and Ohio were, of course, racial attacks writ large. But when it comes to ongoing policy and impending
hurricanes, my guess is that to the Bush gang of overwhelmingly white and arrogantly self-centered righties, the poor blacks
in New Orleans are simply invisible: a constituency that, quite literally, does not count.
So it was a matter of priorities. We, the non-wealthy and the non-white and the non-crazies, having been regularly kicked
in the teeth by this Administration's priorities since Bush's 2001 inauguration, by now know these priorities all too well.
I speak, of course, of the truly pressing concerns that do preoccupy the minds of top Bush operatives, the priorities that
preclude White House attention to such peripheral matters as the destruction of a largely-black, largely poor American city.
The true Bush priorities have been plain to see for years. And you and I know what they are:
- The setting of U.S. energy policy (remember Cheney's closed-door energy meetings for which he claimed executive privilege?)
to benefit energy industry interests closely allied with Bush and Cheney.
- The pursuit of political and/or military control over critical global oil reserves.
- The use of the national shock and anger over the September 11 attacks to rationalize radically inappropriate foreign
and domestic actions in pursuit of the above two objectives.
- The gutting of the federal tax code and of the federal treasury for the benefit of the wealthiest families and the largest
corporations.
- The softening of federal regulation of food, drugs, water supplies, mining, logging, pollution, and health care in order
to enhance profitability for the industries that fill Republican campaign coffers.
- The shrinking of government in order to convert previously public operations into business sectors from which the private
sector can profit.
- The careful use of "pro-life" and "Christian" fundamentalist grandstanding, including anti-gay posturing,
so as to pander to the Administration's far-right base while not excessively offending centrist voters.
- The quelling of domestic dissent, including the surveillance and detention of those who the Administration considers
politically dangerous, through methods that can be rationalized in the interest of "national security."
- The use of fear, deception, character assassination, political threats, photo-op folksiness, Pravda-like right-wing
media operations or any other means deemed necessary to sustain national tolerance of the Bush agenda.
These are the consuming priorities of this Administration. These, and only these, are the items that top the agenda at
any inner-circle Bush administration meeting. All else -- the public stance paraded before the cameras -- is theater, the
politics of necessity, the stage act judged necessary to make the case in Boise or Baton Rouge.
Which is why our president looked so excruciatingly out of place as he promised from his makeshift podium in New Orleans
to "do what it takes."
After all, if you or I were charged with going on national TV to preach for a cause we didn't believe in while, at the
same time, concealing our deepest beliefs and intentions, we might not look so convincing, either.
© 2006 Bruce A. Jacobs (Posted 1/28/06)
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