Bush Kinda Sorta Takes Responsibility
CNN.com – Bush: ‘I take responsibility’ for U.S. failures – Sep 13, 2005
The headline is clearcut, but not the actual statement.
“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government and to the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility.”
Well, I’m really really glad to see that that, you know, to the extent that “the federal government” didn’t, um, FULLY do its job RIGHT – Bush is willing to accept some degree of responsibility. Since he makes sure to limit the terrain to the “reponse capability” and includes “all levels of government,” we’ll just have to wait and see how much responsibility he’s agreeable to assuming.
The admit-no-mistake, take-no-responsibility president must have gotten some decent advice. They looked at the news, the editorials, but most of all the polls – and decided he had better make some gesture. This kinda sorta provisional admission is the least he could do. The least is what we’re used to, and it’s sad to see how gratefully it seems to be received.
The magic phrase is “take responsibility.”
Unfortunately it is couched in the usual language of deniability and deferral. It might be enough for much of America to snuggle back into him, though, especially if he has a great speech written for him to deliver on Thursday night, full of heroic efforts and anecdotes and lots and lots of numbers.
Bush said he wants to know what went right and what went wrong so that he can determine whether the United States was prepared for another storm, or an attack.
“I’m not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives,” Bush said.
Immediate misdirection. He can’t resist.
He knows very well what went wrong – it has a history. He gutted FEMA and put people with no experience in charge of disaster relief. He cut the Army Corp of Engineers funding for years in a row. He didn’t take the declaration of a state of emergency (26th) seriously. So on and so on. So I suppose that what he’ll do is focus on some mistakes that aren’t actually relevant to his reponsibility? That’s my best guess.
Then – this is so typical – ” I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives.”
The people who were on the front lines, saving people, didn’t have your backing, Mr. President. No-one is attacking them. No-one. The one responsible for the misplaced priorities, the corruption, and the deadly slothfulness is you, Mr. President. You lack compassion. It is an improvement that you have brought yourself to the point where you can kinda sorta say the words, but it would be so much better if they rang true. The people of New Orleans will just have to be satisfied with that, huh?
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” — George Bernard Shaw
Now the far right, some of whom might even have experienced temporary dissonance, can get back to the business of one order, one party, one religion – with injustice for most, and with worship to profits for the (morally and biologically superior?) ultra-rich.
“Mistakes, scandals, and failures no longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible, and that the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction. The “marketing” immunity of governments is similar to that of the major brands of washing powder.” – Jean Baudrillard
5 thoughts on “Bush Kinda Sorta Takes Responsibility”
I want to start off by saying that I really like the design of your website: very clean and easy on the eyes.
I have to ask: even if the President hadn’t reduced funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, how could the flooding have been stopped, or even slowed significantly? There was never a plan on the books to strengthen the levees to the point that they could have withstood a category 5 hurricane.
I’d say that Bush didn’t “gut” FEMA, but rather folded in some of the more redundant functions into Homeland Security. And if having been Deputy Director of FEMA for some time didn’t make Michael Brown qualified to run it, who would have been a better choice?
Was asking the Governor of LA before the storm hit to evacuate the state not taking the problem seriously enough? What else could he have done that would have maintained the legal process of authority AND proved to enough people that he felt compassion for the potential victims?
Would you have supported him more if he admitted more mistakes? The last President to have publicly admitted error was JFK, and he did so because we got within a hairsbreadth of nuclear (nucular) war with the Soviets over the Bay of Pigs. What’s an acceptable level of responsibility to take?
Hello Dave! First, I am deeply appreciative of your civil tone. Thank you very much.
I’ll just tell you my opinion on the questions you ask.
The city didn’t flood immediately, during the hurricane. It took a while for the levees to break. They broke exactly where scheduled repairs never took place. It is possible that there would have been flooding in any case, but I suspect it would not have been as catastrophic as it was. I don’t blame Bush for the hurricane. I blame him for his choice of priorities.
If, as you say, FEMA wasn’t in fact “gutted,” then where was Homeland Security, and who was ready to do FEMA’s previous job? If it was the responsibility of Homeland Security, then were were they?
5 of the 8 people in positions of top responsibility at FEMA are cronies with no disaster experience. It’s not my field, so I couldn’t tell you who would have been better qualified. Perhaps you could ask any of the people who quit FEMA after the folding out of “redundant functions” – they do have some things to share. For example, almost a year ago, Pleasant Mann said “Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation’s emergency management capability is being eroded. Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors.” Rather than increasing effectiveness, the move to Homeland Security seems to have added layers of paperwork and organization that likely delayed FEMA’s response to Katrina. Workers were made to travel to remote locations to be “processed” and placed in a pool from which he is dispatched. Bad communications-control-command meant that officials knew less than the average American, who saw it all on tv (and reporters didn’t seem to have much trouble getting in!).
Such corruption and time delays meant that in practice, FEMA was turning away help just when it was needed. A hospital ship in the harbor was ignored, firefighters sent back, help from other cities and states, and so on.
You ask what else President Bush could have done, and there are really so many answers to that question. For me, it boils down to leadership for all Americans, all Americans.
In this case, he didn’t even bother with the appearance of leadership. It would have been a huge boost if he would have made himself the man a whole country turned to. Instead, while people were dying, he was eating cake and playing the guitar. He was so out of touch he praised “Brownie” on a job well done. His first (delayed) visit was a high-flyover. Even Rudy (New York. 9/11) knew what to do at such a time – get there, tell people to remain calm, show that someone is on watch. If there is a delay, tell people. Get teams to circumvent the problems, have an airplane banner tell people what to do, whatever. Be the leader. There are lots of things he could have done that would have been better than staging a photoop that stopped rescue operations.
Would I support him if he admitted his own mistakes? I won’t dissemble. The answer is no, I wouldn’t. I think he is a puppet for big money in any case (he’s not the only one). However, it would show maturity – and possibly compassion – on his part if he could honestly assess what he was doing once in a while. It might also signal the possibility of a governmental community capable of actual dialogue and discussion – a community that grounds its decisions in reality, not ideology that is beneficial only to the few.
An acceptable level of responsibilty? That’s not really the issue to me. It’s not “how much” so much as it is whether he can garner enough insight into himself (and others!) to authentically accept any responsibility at all. On a very fundamental level, I just don’t believe that he cares about most Americans.
He may be a nice man in person, although I sort of doubt it, but the President of the United States of America just has to have more to offer than hiding the truth from its citizens while pursuing an agenda that was too far right for most of the right wing until recently. We are not an empire, and our citizens have rights.
For me, the issues are too big and too lethal to us to ignore them.
People can transform themselves – they can listen, they can grow. With this president, that’s all I have left to hope for, that he will think about that promise of compassionate conservatism. His record is neither.
“Such corruption and time delays meant that in practice, FEMA was turning away help just when it was needed.”
What we’re looking at is bureaucracy rather than outright corruption. Not to be too contrarian, but what government agency doesn’t run on red tape? If an extra level of work-defying red tape got in the way of smooth operation, then sure, that’s bad. That’s inarguable. I wouldn’t chalk it up to corruption, however.
Ultimately, leadership is in the eye of the beholder. Some of us are more impressed and inspired by a leader who will, well, “feel our pain” and beat his breast more publicly. That’s fine, but look at Mayor Nagin, who sort of went off the deep end there and showed himself to be TOO vulnerable. Not that I’m blaming him for the hurricane or its aftermath here, but the guy didn’t show a whole lot of strength in a crisis.
“On a very fundamental level, I just don’t believe that he cares about most Americans.”
Care in one hand and spit in the other, and we know which one will fill up faster; the amount someone CARES about something isn’t as important as what he DOES about it. Who cares how much he cares? I’m concerned about what he does. Insufficient caring isn’t a measurable character flaw.
Anyhow, thanks for the discussion and clarification; I’ll put you on my blogroll and look forward to future posts.
Au contraire, we’re looking at cumbersome bureaucracy plus big-time outright corruption. They knew repairs were needed, and cut funding year after year. They had advance warning of Katrina, but didn’t act. They spent more on a bridge to an uninhabited Alaskan island than they did on New Orleans. And now, Halliburton again picks up a contract without a bid. Corruption is a huge piece of the picture, but I’m saying that what they choose to focus on will be to distract from that underlying picture. I’m not even mentioning so far things like the invasion of Iraq, which among other things took away half of the equipment and a goodly percentage of the National Guard in the area.
Caring does not have to be an emotional display. Far from it! Insufficent caring is a very measurable sort of thing. All you have to do is look at priorities. Do you mean to tell me that you believe the response would have been just the same if the catastrophe had affected the rich rather than (mostly) the poor? Do you really think that now that now the surrounding wetlands will be restored and that the coast will be off limits for development and that the oil refineries won’t expand into the polluted space?
Well, we disagree – but I have to say that I do respect your point of view. If the context were different, and there wasn’t so very much background material and history here, I might agree with you more than I do. Thanks for your input.
What an educated well spoken debate! makes me feel optimistic that the future of this country is not lost. If only more people would communicate like this, maybe something would get done! Touche Heidi. I concur with you 100%. I think the blame falls from the top down. Having survived the Blizzard of 78 in New England, and since then the hype over each snowfall, I know how most of these people felt. Every storm is hyped as “gonna be big, stock up now, dont wait” that people loose the urgency. However, as I watched the news reports in the days leading up to this making landfall, I saw the urgency was REAL! The weather channel guys and girls were practially telling you “this is the big one, run for your lives”. People grew complaciant. Like this country has for letting go of projects that are needed, to fund pork barrell projects like that bridge in Alaska.(I apologize for spelling, not the best!)