Brendan Nyhan

What will the political effects of Katrina be?

Fred Barnes, always eager to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt, touts an ABC News poll supposedly showing Bush won’t be hurt much by Katrina in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today:

Americans break along normal partisan lines in judging Mr. Bush’s performance in coping with Katrina, an ABC News poll found. Only a minority (44%) fault him personally. Even so, his approval rating may slip a bit.

However, that poll was conducted on Sept. 2, the day after Katrina hit. At that point, the full scope of the government’s failure to address the situation in New Orleans wasn’t entirely clear. And, as Mystery Pollster points out, a poll conducted in only one night will have a lower response rate and therefore may not be fully representative of the public at large (the other polls that are available are also less than ideal — see MP for more).

In short, we don’t know yet about the long-term effects of Katrina politically, which could be much more damaging for Bush than Barnes allows, especially since many Republicans have acknowledged that the response to the hurricane was a failure, which will cue party faithful that the President really did screw up. Later this week, when new conventional polls are released, we’ll know a lot more.

Update 9/7: More on problems with the ABC News poll here.

This Josh Marshall post is so disturbing and indicative of a larger problem that I want to reproduce it in full:

On the Al Franken show this afternoon I mentioned this article from today’s Salt Lake Tribune which tells the story of about a thousand firefighters from around the country who volunteered to serve in the Katrina devastation areas. But when they arrived in Atlanta to be shipped out to various disaster zones in the region, they found out that they were going to be used as FEMA community relations specialists. And they were to spend a day in Atlanta getting training on community relations, sexual harassment awareness, et al. This of course while life and death situations were still the order of the day along a whole stretch of the Gulf Coast.

It’s an article you’ve really got a to read to appreciate the full measure of folly and surreality.

But the graf at the end of the piece really puts everything in perspective, and gives some sense what the Bush administration really has in mind when it talks about a crisis. The paper reports that one team finally was sent to the region …

As specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

You can’t make this stuff up.

The part of government that actually governs can’t figure out how to use 1,000 highly skilled firefighters, but the spin machine will put them right to work!

More liberal pundit jargon, this time from Michael Moore in an email to supporters about Katrina:

There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years. Do not listen to anyone who says we can discuss all this later. No, we can’t. Our country is in an immediate state of vulnerability. More hurricanes, wars, and other disasters are on the way, and a lazy bunch of self-satisfied lunatics are still running the show.

In this passage, Moore goes further than any other liberal pundit I’ve seen, making the specific argument that the devastation in New Orleans was “manmade” and “caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years.” Whatever you think about what happened, saying that the primary cause of the devastation wasn’t Katrina is lunacy.

His scathing new comic about the political aftermath of Katrina is well worth sitting through a brief Salon advertisement. Brutal and hilarious. (Via Alterman.)

One of the key tactics of political jargon* is confounding intention and (alleged) effect, as in this passage from Eric Alterman today:

In the name of fighting “terrorism,” the administration has sent 40 percent of the National Guard to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away.

The phrase “in order to” clearly implies that the Bush administration wanted to “create more terrorists and let bin Laden get away.” Alterman would no doubt claim that he’s just being sarcastic, but that’s an easy excuse that allows him (and people like him) to make this sort of vile suggestion.

(* By jargon, I mean the highly engineered and manipulative language used by pundits, politicians and PR experts.)

Yesterday, Barbara Bush proclaimed how great it is to be a Katrina refugee in Texas:

What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is [the Katrina refugees] all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this is working very well for them.

I have one simple question: When will Bush or her son apologize?

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party has begun.

On Thursday, I saw David Brooks give a surprisingly effective speech at the American Political Science Association meetings. Most of it was standup comedy based on his books Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive, which the audience loved. But Brooks also made a serious argument that the GOP must confront economic inequality and cultural segmentation. This was the Brooks we saw before George W. Bush defeated John McCain and silenced Brooks and his fellow “national greatness conservatives” – and it’s a compelling message.

Brooks said that the GOP is “a party that doesn’t have a political philosophy” at this point, and argued that it must adapt if it is to remain a governing party. A majority party cannot stand in opposition to government. In addition, he said, the GOP must acknowledge the reality it has denied – that economic inequality has grown tremendously over the last several decades, and that this growth in inequality is hurting American democracy.

What Brooks is proposing is reviving national greatness conservatism in a different form – changing the GOP’s “exhausted” anti-government philosophy, which he called a “complete failure” even before Katrina, to one advocating a “limited but energetic government” promoting social unity and economic vitality. He traced this strain of American thinking from Alexander Hamilton to Abraham Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt, but noted that it largely died out in the early 20th century because it didn’t align with the major ideological cleavage over the size of government, which divided big-government Democrats from small-government Republicans.

He outlined a series of policies that would advance his twin goals of economic vitality and social equality in areas such as family policy, education, entitlement reform, tax reform, immigration reform, national service and civic education, and named Rudy Giuliani and John McCain as two politicians who subscribe to versions of this philosophy (as well as some Democrats).

While I don’t agree with all of Brooks’ agenda, the country would be a better place if the Republicans took his advice. Katrina has thrown the incoherence of the GOP approach to governing into sharp relief. But Brooks and McCain face the same problem that overcame them in 1998-2000 – namely, that the national greatness approach doesn’t line up with the major ideological cleavage in American society. Conservatives don’t like it, and they control the Republican primaries. Despite Brooks’ post-Katrina claim that “Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely GOP nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk,” a pro-life, anti-government politician is still likely to win the Republican nomination in 2008.

Still, our country needs to have this debate. Good for David Brooks for raising the issue.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page has implied yet again that the Bush tax cuts increased revenue:

Predictably, the Bush tax cuts are under attack for denying revenue to the government and because they don’t require “sacrifice” in wartime. But the truth is that federal revenues are rising by an estimated $262 billion–or roughly 14%–this year thanks to the growth that followed the 2003 tax cuts. Republicans have been far too defensive on tax cuts, and Katrina is an opening to explain their necessity and to push for making them permanent

After presenting the criticism that is being offered — “the Bush tax cuts are under attack for denying revenue to the government” — the Journal sets it up as a false claim, writing that “the truth is that federal revenues are rising by an estimated $262 billion–or roughly 14%–this year thanks to the growth that followed the 2003 tax cuts.” This falsely implies that the tax cuts have not denied funds to the federal government, when they’ve actually decreased revenue significantly. A small one-year increase in revenue after multiple years of declines does not make the overall impact of the tax cuts positive.

This is unconscionable:

[L]ocal officials, who still feel overwhelmed by the continuing tragedy, demanded accountability and as well as action.

“Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired?” asked Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans.

Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard [the president of Jefferson Parish] complained on “Meet the Press.”

When Wal-Mart sent three trailer trucks loaded with water, FEMA officials turned them away, he said. Agency workers prevented the Coast Guard from delivering 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and on Saturday they cut the parish’s emergency communications line, leading the sheriff to restore it and post armed guards to protect it from FEMA, Mr. Broussard said.

Here’s more Broussard on “Meet the Press” (transcript, video):

The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” And he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday.” And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

Heads must roll, starting with Brown, the failed horse association executive who was installed as head of FEMA in a hideous act of cronyism.

But don’t worry, the White House has a plan … to alleviate the terrible press it’s been getting. Yes, Karl Rove & co. have their priorities straight. “Under the command of President Bush’s two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.” The administration “orchestrated visits by cabinet members to the region… directed administration officials not to respond to attacks from Democrats on the relief efforts, and sought to move the blame for the slow response to Louisiana state officials, according to Republicans familiar with the White House plan.”

Truly inspiring. Politics always comes first with this crowd.

Does the base realize that President Bush is in big trouble politically? According to the Washington Post, one “conservative ally of the White House” referred to conservatives as the “last 35 percent of the country that’s really on his side” — ouch:

Many conservatives howled last summer at the prospect of Gonzales replacing O’Connor because they view him as unreliable on abortion, affirmative action and other key issues, and they renewed the complaints within hours of Rehnquist’s death.

“I don’t know what they get by alienating the last remaining 35 percent of the country that’s really on his side,” said a conservative ally of the White House who would comment only if granted anonymity.

We’ll know more about that last 35 percent when the first post-Katrina job approval numbers come out later this week.