THE SECOND BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

THE SECOND BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS was fought last night with George Bush’s usual weapons of symbol, money, and will.  Bush’s speech on Hurricane Katrina and his response to the response people have had to his response was a rhetorical and symbolic disaster. Only armies of angels unavailable in this world could save Bush from the descent to political hell his poor performance so richly deserves.  [story] [text of speech] [video]

BUSH LOST THE SECOND BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS when he didn’t show up when people first needed him as a symbol of somebody who cares.  Last time Bush left the symbol bit to Giuliani until Bush seized the nation with a bullhorn.  What we have now is bull of a different sort.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SPEECH WAS WRONG from the start, from the guys who tell us they do things so right.  On the level of symbol, Bush at a podium was oddly detached first from people, than even more detached from the one building he would like us to believe he resides in, a cathedral of god in the distance. 

THE WHITE HOUSE ADMITS it paid for lights down low to flash on the church.  The lights down low cut off the cathedral spires.  Bush’s speech never soared and his appropriated church looked oddly flat, more a mission church than a cathedral.  Bush and the church were strangely cast in blue.

BUSH CAST THE STRUGGLE in martial terms that a people weary of water and wind will not abide.  One must wisely choose when to fill the commander in chief’s hat or risk people realizing the multiple poses reveal a head empty of any other ideas.  The people now yearn for a peace impossible for such a commander to order. The people seek succor, not the succession of programs all too obviously part of Bush’s craven political process.

BUSH WOULD HAVE AN ARMY OF COMPASSION march in where saints without swords have previously come marching in.  O, the people would love to be in that joyous, musical number when the saints come marching in.  Bush struck all the wrong notes before yesterday, so his new battle is more lost than he realizes, lost long before it ever could begin.

RECOMMENDED READING
[Balz/Washington Post] The main text of President Bush's nationally televised address last night was the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, but the clear subtext was the rebuilding of a presidency that is now at its lowest point ever, confronted by huge and simultaneous challenges at home and abroad -- and facing a country divided along partisan and racial lines.

THE HERETIK WOULD SAY the main subtext is the rebuilding of Bush's political future.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS [Brian Williams/NBC] The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions. [hat tip: Cookie Jill] [more from Cookie Jill]

HOW DOES THE SONG GO?  Lights on, nobobdy home. [Jesse Taylor/Pandagon] Mysteriously, Bush's well-lit New Orleans lost power right after his speech.    Kinda like what's going to happen once the political pressure is off for him to rebuild...it's a battle to see who can keep the power on first, Iraq or New Orleans!

HOW WE WILL PAY FOR KATRINA AND THE WAR WITHOUT END IN IRAQ reminds The Heretik of the childhood game of musical chairs,where somebody gets left out when the music ends.  The off key song remains the same.  We have only so much money yet the people who sit on thrones get tax cuts and people left standing are told to kneel for their scraps.  Watching Bush speak is like waiting for the little clown to jump out of the box.  Pop goes the weasel.

BUT SERIOUSLY [Centerfield] No joke. I thought Chris Matthews said it best when he said that this is a speech we would expect from Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt, not George W. Bush.

THE HERETIK WOULD MORE BELIEVE the rhetoric if it were matched by right action, if words set flight in air did not crash to the ground with a later, less noted thunderous thud.  Bush promised twenty billion to New York City.  Where did all that money go?

NO McKRAP FROM THE MASTER [Krugman/ NY Times] But George W. Bush isn't F.D.R. Indeed, in crucial respects he's the anti-F.D.R.
President Bush subscribes to a political philosophy that opposes government activism - that's why he has tried to downsize and privatize programs wherever he can. (He still hopes to privatize Social Security, F.D.R.'s biggest legacy.) So even his policy failures don't bother his strongest supporters: many conservatives view the inept response to Katrina as a vindication of their lack of faith in government, rather than as a reason to reconsider their faith in Mr. Bush.

AND THE HERETIK REPEATS Bush is asking people to look to the rosy future and forget the weeds that have already grown in his wicked garden.  What is good in this country has been choked out.  What resources we should treasure have gone to grow poisonous plants that will only bear more ill fruit soon.

[The Moderate Voice/Michael Stickings] Personally, I didn't think much of it. I don't doubt his compassion, and he may have said the right things ("there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans"), but I can't get past his obvious incompetence and the utter lack of leadership he showed after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. . . . . David Kusnet, former Clinton speechwriter, liked Bush's speech. As a speech, not necessarily for the content (though he liked much of that, too): "Never before has a president spoken so well and acted so ineptly. Perhaps the rhetoric will win Bush a second chance." I just don't think he spoke that well, though the rhetoric may indeed give him "a second chance".

[Early Warning/William Arkin] Amidst all of President Bush's proposals last night was one decree that the Commander-in-Chief can implement without Congressional or public intervention: "It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces -- the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."

THE HERETIK NOTICED how Bush slipped in a military role in disasters which Arkin correctly views as unwarranted.  Um, didn't Bush get behind the cash cow of the Department Homeland Security for just such  disasters?  And where would Bush get the soldiers for such an army when we are already overstretched and how would he pay for it?

[Richard Cranium/AllSpinZone] There's an extremely slippery slope ahead. After the human suffering and civic devastation that we've all seen in the past few weeks, I don't think anyone can argue that there needs to be better coordination between federal, state, and local resources. What I don't want to see is a secession of local authority to the federal government in advance of a perceived threat, either natural or man made.

THE HERETIK IS NOT CERTAIN he earlier made more clear Bush's call for the military to intervene in future disasters was the most surreal and nightmarish moment of the entire dark drama writ in words black and blue last night.  Bush here would once again take advantage of a wounded country to advance a most backward agenda of more control.  And this from a man who campaigns against government?

FOLLOW THE MONEY [Pam Spaulding] When I heard "Gulf Opportunity Zone," emit from his pie-hole, I also heard the sucking sound of money leaving my wallet and getting deposited into all of his thieving contractor friends' bank accounts.

WHERE WILL THE MONEY GO? [Lambert/Corrente] Say, this project is going to go on for a long time, right? Who'll take bets on the idea that Bush is going to get a big-pay, no-show job reconstructing the New New Orleans? Say, at Halliburton?

THE HERETIK SEES  A DANCE IN A CIRCLE through a revolving door, money and men who care for mammon more than people.  The world will continue to go round and round, but a fair amount of our fortune is headed down a wasteful toilet toward a foul moral cesspool without a soul surviving.  New Orleans and the aftermath of Katrina will define this era of error far more than the debacle in the desert that is Iraq.  We will drown in the willful excesses of one man who has drunk too deeply from the cup of power. The will of many must oppose the power found in one, one who listens to no one but himself.

[Howard Kurtz/WaPo] Well, the choreography was pretty impressive.

OY, THE HERETIK ALSO SEES Kurtz took note of this, which he cites here.

 

MORE TO FOLLOW

Comments

[Shakespeare's Sister]

My trackback to you isn't working. Linked you here. :-)

[Neil Shakespeare]

Thanks, Heretik. I was looking for something like this this morning. I must confess I couldn't bear to watch it. I saw the "set" and couldn't stop laughing. I see watertiger called it his "Disneyland Speech", which seems appropriate. And the statue! "The Bluelit Cathedral of Andy Jackson". Shameless, ain't he?

[wanda]

There are days when your posts can't be topped. This is one of them.
I didn't watch the 'speech' last night, simply because I can't bear to look at the man's face anymore. I'm sick of his lies and alibis.
Interesting that they could light the city up for his speech but not for the people who live there. Also interesting was the idea that the entire charade had a rather 'blue' glow to it. On Survivor the path you walk down as you leave after being evicted, is lighted with a soft 'blue' glow. It is done symbolically to signify your 'death' in the game. Hopefully the 'blue' glow around Bush last night was just as significant.

[Wordlackey]

Wow. Great post. The power on and off particularly piques my interest. However it is so typical of the PR and "image" these folks continually project at the expense of actual accomplishments. As long as the perception of the event is good, who will care about the scene an hour later? Feh.

[dorsano]

Whenever Bush wraps his plans in the rhetoric of the Democratic Party, he's planning some sort of date rape.

[ae]

'tik, sweetie, how do you do it? This is great!
xo,
ae

[UnapologeticAtheist]

Dangit, 'Tik, you stole my previous blog-entry title!!

Nice work though