Bush’s Katrina Speech
I didn’t watch. Assuming some of you did, I’d be interested in your take on what Bush said in New Orleans last night.
David Kusnet in The New Republic Online offers grudging admiration: Damage control.
And not exactly speech-related, but Joshua Micah Marshall has some reconstruction-related links and forbodings here: This worries me.
September 17th, 2005 at 7:37 am
I actually thought it was one of the better speeches Bush has given, in both content and style. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating – let’s see what he actually does. And don’t people other than me wonder why, four years after 9/11, we’re still talking about how our disaster response sucks, and how we’ll have to figure out what to do about it? What have we been doing these last four years? Nothing, it turns out.
In the end, I agree with Joy Behar on Bill Maher’s show last night. Bush’s speech reminded her of nothing so much as an abusive husband showing up on your doorstep with flowers, promising to be good this time.
September 17th, 2005 at 7:46 am
Also, I love how conservatives hated the speech, because Bush talked about all the money he’ll spend on reconstruction. Where have they been during the last five drunken-sailor years?
Mostly I just love hearing conservatives trash Bush – it’s a cognitive dissonance fest of the highest order.
September 18th, 2005 at 1:12 am
This article by John Tabin published on 09/16/05 in the American Spectator says it all the title is, “Back in Top Form” he points out Hurricane Katrina as President Bush said, “was not a normal hurricane and the normal disaster relief system was not equal to it,” But after a slow start, the President has proven that he is more than equal to the political tempest that landed ashore with Katrina.
As Mr. Tabin noted the real joy in the speech was afterwards when he recount the story which I saw live on ABC as well it was very funny watching it and reading about it the next day.
Mr. Tabin
After the speech ended, ABC provided a scene of wonderful high comedy, with reporter Dean Reynolds interviewing evacuees outside the Astrodome and repeatedly getting the “wrong” answers delivered in the almost musical accent of black New Orleans. Do you think the President was sincere? “Yes.” Did you hear anything you didn’t believe? “No, I didn’t.” One woman not only declined to criticize the President, she forcefully argued that state and local authorities deserve the lion’s share of the blame for not acting long before the feds could be expected to arrive, invoking the famous unused buses.
Poor Reynolds, caught in a white liberal nightmare where the black people refuse to follow the script. But it’s no surprise that Bush won the evacuees over. It was, as one woman put it, “a well fine speech.”
END
http://www.americanprowler.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8757
September 18th, 2005 at 6:41 am
This says it all….
“The President Bush spoke to the nation from my city. I am not a Republican. I did not vote for George W. Bush — in fact, I worked pretty hard against him in 2000 and 2004. But on Thursday night, after watching him speak from the heart, I could not have been prouder of the president and the plan he outlined to empower those who lost everything and to rebuild the Gulf Coast.”
Donna Brazile: Democratic political consultant who managed Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091602167_pf.html
September 21st, 2005 at 9:19 am
Is this new threat, Hurricane Rita, mother nature’s way of spitting back in the face of the US the toxic sludge that is being pumped into her waters?
That may sound pretty aweful, but one has to wonder.