Katrina Lets Bush Define His Presidency Again

[bigpoppanils]

Katrina Lets Bush Define His Presidency Again: Andrew Ferguson
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- With his speech from New Orleans last week promising to ``do what it takes'' to rebuild an entire region of the country from the ground up, ``higher and better,'' President George W. Bush began the third phase of his presidency. He has entered the post-post-9/11 world, and he'd like the rest of us to follow.

A thumbnail history of Bush's time in office might be in order here. Call me a codger, but I am old enough to remember the earliest months of Bush's tenure, before the planes slammed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and -- as our cultural commentators immediately insisted -- ``everything changed.''

It was a different world, indeed. In 2001, as that first summer drew to a close, the White House was already showing signs of drift.

With Senator Edward Kennedy grinning behind him as a totem of bipartisanship, Bush had signed his education reform legislation, itself a totem of ``compassionate conservatism.'' He had enacted an assortment of tax cuts. He had tinkered with federal regulations to make it easier for religious groups to distribute social services.

Only once had the president roused himself to make a televised address to the nation. The subject was embryonic stem-cell research, a then-hot issue whose heat was purely relative --evidence of how cool and sleepy the political discussion had otherwise become.

And after that? There seemed not much left for the compassionate-conservative president to do.

The War President

The terrorist attacks gave Bush's presidency a direction and an objective. The compassionate-conservative president gave way to the war president: decisive, alert, farseeing and competent. Bush's success in that role brought him a second term.

Yet in 2005, as Bush's fifth summer as president drew to a close, his White House seemed trapped in something even more politically dangerous than drift. The war presidency no longer looked to be the success it once was.

His job approval rating hovered around 40 percent in most polls. Only 6 percent of respondents in a Sept. 9-13 New York Times/CBS News poll listed ``terrorism'' as the nation's biggest problem. Nearly 60 percent disapproved of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq.

And then came the federal government's lethargic response to Katrina. This failure subverted the entire rationale for Bush's post- 9/11 presidency; for if he isn't a war president -- decisive, alert, farseeing, and competent -- then what is he?

Return to Compassion

Thursday night he gave the answer: He is the compassionate- conservative president. Again.

Bush promised ``bold action'' going far beyond a simple restoration of the Gulf Coast. He pledged also to confront the legacy of racial discrimination that he said led to the region's widespread poverty. The rebuilding, Bush vowed, ``will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.''

In an e-mail to journalists, one Bush adviser, Peter Wehner, called Bush's plan for the Gulf Coast ``an unprecedented effort to use conservative means to alleviate persistent poverty,'' transcending and improving upon the Great Society programs of the past. For its final 40 months in office, the administration seems to be proposing nothing less than a remaking of U.S. social policy, using Katrina's storm path as a laboratory.

Extravagant Language

Bush has always had a weakness for rhetorical grandiosity -- recasting situations and policies in the most extravagant language. In 2002, the tyrants in North Korea, Iran and Iraq were not merely dangerous and unpredictable, requiring constant vigilance; they constituted, Bush said, the ``axis of evil.''

The president's hopes for democratizing the Middle East were not merely an ambitious strategy for U.S. security; they set the stage for -- as he put it in the penultimate line of his second inaugural address -- ``the greatest achievements in the history of freedom.''

Perhaps, then, we can discount Bush's rhetoric from last Thursday as well. But no one can discount the eagerness of Bush and the Republican Congress to be seen to be doing ``whatever it takes,'' with a new ``urban homestead act'' and a ``Gulf Opportunity Zone'' setting the stage for what promises to be a long, sustained period of compassionate conservatism.

Self-Parody

Already some of these efforts verge on self-parody. Last Thursday, the Republican Congress, having appropriated $62 billion in disaster relief with promises of more to come, launched its own experiment in conservative social policy. What do Katrina's victims need now? Congress's answer: tax cuts. The centerpiece of the package was a waiver of the 10 percent penalty usually incurred for early withdrawals from IRAs.

In an unhappy coincidence, that same day, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released a survey of Katrina's evacuees now living in Texas, the very people for whom Congress passed its tax cuts. Almost 75 percent of them had annual incomes of less than $30,000 last year, meaning that, for a family of four, they have no income tax liability to begin with. Only 31 percent have a bank account; only 28 percent have a credit card.

Such a population, in other words, is unlikely to be grateful for the 10 percent waiver on penalties for early IRA withdrawals. It was, however, a nice thought, though it does complicate a larger question: Will the Gulf Coast really make a suitable laboratory for the administration's grand experiment in compassionate conservatism?

Upon the answer to this question Bush is now betting his presidency -- phase three.

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...d=aLhLuRslY5uM