| Home |
KATRINA
August 30th, 2006
Human suffering aside, Katrina is most relevant historically and politically as the first failure in leadership that Bush was unable to spin his way out of. It exposed a chink in the armor of his vaunted PR machine, because, unlike Iraq, reporters found a way to get into New Orleans without being embedded and were able to report the realities on the ground at the very same time that the White House was pitching their sanitized version of events from the safety of briefing rooms in Washington. The Bush White House was also suddenly without its biggest PR crutch - it couldn't portray critics as unpatriotic appeasers of terrorists as it had with Iraq.
However, to say the White House learned a valuable lesson or that the media and public are no longer fooled by the White House spin would in itself be too rosy an assessment. The Katrina spin that failed is very similar to spin we continue to be subjected to to this day:
1) "Heck of a job Brownie":
This is one example of many in which praises the work of an underperforming subordinate rather than show leadership and accountability. Of course, Brownie did such a great job that Bush forced him out of FEMA within days and tried to use him as a shield to deflect any blame on himself.
Of course, Bush has also praised George Tenet, who the White House simultaneously blamed for the biggest intelligence failure in our history, and Paul Bremer, whose decision to break up the Iraqi army is blamed by many for fanning the flames of sectarian violence. In fact, Bush presented both men with the the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the same ceremony.
2) Don't Blame Us, Blame the Hurricane:
Although Bush himself was ultimately forced to acknowledge his failed leadership on Katrina, his PR machine forcefully condemned what they categorized as partisan attacks on him for something completely out of his control. Conservative mouthpiece after mouth piece scoffed at the liberals who were now blaming Bush for the weather. Of course, this is the simple but surprisingly effective trick of blame deflection.
In Iraq, we should criticize Bush's foreign policy, we should blame the insurgents. On 9/11, we can't criticize the government's intelligence failure or preparedness, we can only blame the terrorists.
This is like saying that a security guard who falls asleep on duty can't be held accountable for the resulting vandalism that takes place on his watch. We can only blame the vandals. An absurd argument, but one which many swallow.
3) We're making great progress:
The spin that has bought the administration extra time on Iraq just didn't work on the Gulf Coast. People could see in real time what was happening on the ground and it only made federal officials look stupid and out of touch to be contradicting reality. Those officials seemed like the infamous Iraqi spokesman who promised that the invading coalition forces would suffer a terrible defeat even as U.S. tanks were rolling into Baghdad.
Of course, we are still barraged with announcements of great progress in Iraq side by side with announcements of escalating sectarian violence and a steady stream of U.S. causalties.
Katrina woke the nation up to an extent, but the public and media have not yet fully applied the lessons learned to other White House policies and the spin used to defend them.
Bush, Kerry, Gore, Iraq, Al Qaeda, Politics, Stem Cells, Abortion
|