More Katrina Emails

[southsider2k5]

Katrina e-mails tell naked truth about politicians

 

Leonard Pitts, Knight Ridder/Tribune

Published December 20, 2005

 

 

Apparently, Brownie wasn't the only one.

 

You remember the grief that fell on Michael Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, last month after the release of some embarrassing e-mails. They revealed that as Hurricane Katrina was submerging New Orleans and shredding Biloxi, Brown and his aides were exchanging e-mails on trivial matters, including the question of which clothes would make him "look more hard-working" on television. The e-mails were released at the request of a Democratic congressman to embarrass Brown, whose agency is widely felt to have bungled the federal response to the storm.

 

Now, as a means of ensuring the goose is served sauce similar to that presented the gander, Republican aides to a House panel investigating that response have released e-mails sent by subordinates of Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco. Suffice to say, they do not present her administration in a heroic light. Rather, they prove--not that proof was needed--that shallowness is not solely a GOP value.

 

"Please put [blanco] in casual clothes, a baseball cap, etc.," wrote Liz Mangham, a public relations consultant to the governor on Sept. 2, four days after the storm. "She needs to visit a shelter in prime time and talk tough, but hug some folks and be sensitive."

 

Mangham added that Blanco "looks ... too comfy in her suit. Please put secretaries in caps and jeans ... I don't care if they are in the field or not ... they should look like they are."

 

Kim Fuller, another gubernatorial flack, echoed that theme two days later, suggesting that Blanco "might dress down a bit and look like she has rolled up her sleeves. I have some great Liz Claiborne sports clothes that look kind of Eddie Bauer, but with class, but would bring her down to [the] level of getting to work."

 

Fuller also thought it would be good if the governor could be seen "doing something `physical.' ... Maybe if she is with the troops she can put a few bags of ice in the hands of the citizens who need it. Make sure she is not wearing a suit, and make sure she has rough-looking shoes."

 

For the record, people were dying as these e-mails were being sent. In that context, they are nothing less than vulgar.

 

I'm reminded of a T-shirt I once saw in church. Front side: Jesus is coming. Back side: Look busy. Not "be" busy, you understand. What matters most is simply to look the part.

 

Is it really necessary to point out that when people--your countrymen, no less--are homeless, hungry and dying in the face of natural disaster, your first duty as an official, not to mention as a member of the human race, is not to do political calculus or worry about how you look on camera? It is to give help.

 

Apparently, that no longer goes without saying. If there's more damning evidence of how superficial, one-dimensional and petty is our political life in this country, I can't name it.

 

I am neither unaware of nor unsympathetic to the ways in which television has changed politics in the last half century. Nixon lost a presidential debate and a presidential campaign, some say, because he looked haggard onstage next to the handsome and virile Kennedy. Kennedy understood the importance of television imagery. His opponent did not.

 

That importance has only grown as television news--to say nothing of Internet news--has morphed into a communications megaplex that never sleeps. Perception becomes more important than reality, so perception has to be micromanaged, even at reality's expense. Remembering to wear Liz Claiborne sports clothes that look kind of Eddie Bauer, but with class, comes to seem an issue of life and death importance.

 

But where Katrina was concerned, life and death were not about perception. They were about, well ... living and dying. They were about a reality that could not be stage-managed.

 

It is shameful that some of us even tried.

 

----------

 

Leonard Pitts is a syndicated columnist based in Washington. E-mail: [email protected]

[Rex Kickass]

I work with Advance people. This is what they do. Always working for the shot, always working to make their boss look like a rock star. It's crazy.

[Texsox]

I don't have a problem with that at all. I believe one of the most important role our leaders have is to be cheerleaders. Reagan came at a great time, the hangover from Nixon, Vietnam, Carter, Ford's WIN, etc. The comes in, riding a white horse, and cleans up the world with a smile and a nod. Clinton was blowing a sax, shaking off the President as old guy image, Bush comes flying in on an aircraft carrier, I love all that stuff. People feel better, the work harder, and it really does help. Clinton's "I feel your pain" was brilliant and he pulled it off well, and people reacted. After 9/11 I thought Bush deserved high a marks, not as a manager, but as a spiritual advisor, source of comfort, and cheerleader. If the pr flacks can help that, go for it. For the same reason I was dissapointed in Bush during the hurricanes. I thought he's be at his absolute best for the country. I wanted to see him with rolled up sleeves, jeans, boots, and helping. I know it would have only been for a few seconds, he's stop when the cameras stopped rolling, but I'd remember that and feel better. He would be emmulating the behavior and offering up a model.

 

A politician has to ask, what's the best thing to do here and now in this crisis?

 

It may be to grab a bag of sand and place it there. It is probably better to encourage a thousand people to grab a bag and place it there. That makes much more sense than just placing one bag annonymously. Everything a leader says and does is important in the time of a natural tragedy. We want them looking and acting in a manner that helps. So if wearing jeans and scooping some soup for the homeless helps, then do that.

 

I think too many people underestimate what feeling good about the future and feeling good about America does to the economy, crime rates, and everything else. Our best Presidents make us feel good about ourselves and America.

 

There is substance to emotions.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I don't have a problem with that at all. I believe one of the most important role our leaders have is to be cheerleaders. Reagan came at a great time, the hangover from Nixon, Vietnam, Carter, Ford's WIN, etc. The comes in, riding a white horse, and cleans up the world with a smile and a nod. Clinton was blowing a sax, shaking off the President as old guy image, Bush comes flying in on an aircraft carrier, I love all that stuff. People feel better, the work harder, and it really does help. Clinton's "I feel your pain" was brilliant and he pulled it off well, and people reacted. After 9/11 I thought Bush deserved high a marks, not as a manager, but as a spiritual advisor, source of comfort, and cheerleader. If the pr flacks can help that, go for it. For the same reason I was dissapointed in Bush during the hurricanes. I thought he's be at his absolute best for the country. I wanted to see him with rolled up sleeves, jeans, boots, and helping. I know it would have only been for a few seconds, he's stop when the cameras stopped rolling, but I'd remember that and feel better. He would be emmulating the behavior and offering up a model.

 

A politician has to ask, what's the best thing to do here and now in this crisis?

 

It may be to grab a bag of sand and place it there. It is probably better to encourage a thousand people to grab a bag and place it there. That makes much more sense than just placing one bag annonymously. Everything a leader says and does is important in the time of a natural tragedy. We want them looking and acting in a manner that helps. So if wearing jeans and scooping some soup for the homeless helps, then do that.

 

I think too many people underestimate what feeling good about the future and feeling good about America does to the economy, crime rates, and everything else. Our best Presidents make us feel good about ourselves and America.

 

There is substance to emotions.

 

 

You mentioned Bush post-9-11. Who can forget the image of him standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn telling the firefighters that we're gonna get the bastards who did this. That was a timeless moment right there.

[kapkomet]

You mentioned Bush post-9-11.  Who can forget the image of him standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn telling the firefighters that we're gonna get the bastards who did this.  That was a timeless moment right there.

4.5 years later, we still haven't.

[Texsox]

You mentioned Bush post-9-11.  Who can forget the image of him standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn telling the firefighters that we're gonna get the bastards who did this.  That was a timeless moment right there.

 

Any it was a scripted as anything else that came before and followed. Every speech, every outfit, every event is choreographed for the President.

 

That is why I thought the hurricanes would be a huge Bush stage, and he just didn't make it happen.

[Rex Kickass]

The stories I've heard about a lot of his addresses and settings and equipment they've used to get the shot is incredible.

[Mercy!]

You mentioned Bush post-9-11.  Who can forget the image of him standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn telling the firefighters that we're gonna get the bastards who did this.  That was a timeless moment right there.

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com

 

Bush's 'bullhorn

moment' just bull

 

Tuesday, September 20th, 2005

 

I'm amazed that anyone is amazed that it took George W. Bush three days to show up in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

 

That's exactly how long it took him to show up at Ground Zero after 9/11.

 

So it mystifies me that the pundits and the cable gasbags keep telling us that George W. Bush missed his "bullhorn moment" in New Orleans.

 

No, he didn't.

 

Because his bullhorn moment in New York City was just as late and just as disgraceful as his fumbling handling of the Katrina carnage.

 

I wish I had a bullhorn to shout just how tired I am of hearing about how wonderful George W. Bush's "bullhorn moment" was.

 

It will go down as one of the worst moments in American history because when he stood on the smoldering ruins amid the dust of the dead it was through that bullhorn that Bush's Big Lie was first shouted to the world that the people who knocked down those buildings would soon be hearing from us.

 

It might have been a fairly good, better-late-than-never moment if all Bush had done was use that bullhorn to launch a war on Al Qaeda. It might have escalated into a great piece of historical stagecraft if we'd just gone into Afghanistan and stayed the course on a noble quest to kill Osama Bin Laden and all his Al Qaeda cowards who murdered our people.

 

But the words that echoed through Bush's bullhorn into the smoldering 16 acres of lower Manhattan, the words that resounded across the grieving outer boroughs and the sorrowful suburbs and the stunned globe, were but an orchestrated setup for a grander diabolical scheme.

 

Because we fast gave up the hunt for Bin Laden for a bait-and-switch war in Iraq that had nothing to do with the rubble upon which Bush stood at Ground Zero shouting bull through his bullhorn.

 

Bush has now declared that half-a-buck stops on his desk for Katrina.

 

But he doesn't ever mention that Osama Bin Laden is still out there roaming free and plotting more American murders. That stops on his desk, too.

 

Historians will refocus that bullhorn moment as the point of origin to exploit a terrible attack on America for a preconceived war in Iraq that had nothing to do with our dead.

 

Historians also will remember that directly after the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 2001, killing 2,749, our fearless leader, with all that Texas Air Guard combat training, hopped aboard Air Force One and lammed to, um, Omaha.

 

Talk about heroic.

 

And as real heroes dug in the rubble for signs of life, shortening their own lives in the toxic air, Bush hid out. Then three days later, when the coast was clear, he arrived to shoot a Karl Rove-inspired reelection commercial and to launch a war in Iraq.

 

The invasion of Baghdad started in New York in that "bullhorn moment" three days after Sept. 11.

 

That final battle of the war in Iraq was lost in New Orleans when Bush showed up three days after Katrina.

 

As bodies floated down the street, and tens of thousands were stranded without food, water and medical supplies in the convention center, the white flag in the war in Iraq was waved when Bush told Federal Emergency Management Agency boss Michael Brown, an incompetent crony, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

 

Now, with Bush's approval rating at 40%, with more than 50% disapproving of his handling of Iraq, the Security Moms and NASCAR Dads for Bush are silent. Even the Swift Boat Vets can't save Bush from drowning in his own ineptitude.

 

For what the floods of Katrina revealed was just how out of his depth George W. Bush is as presidential stock.

 

I often ask successful conservative businessmen friends if they would let George W. Bush run their private businesses. They almost always smile and admit they wouldn't. And yet they voted for him torun the most powerful nation on the planet.

 

It would be funny except that almost 1,900 Americans troops have been killed to create an Islamic state that spirals toward a possible civil war in Iraq since Bush's wonderful "bullhorn moment."

[BigSqwert]

You mentioned Bush post-9-11.  Who can forget the image of him standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn telling the firefighters that we're gonna get the bastards who did this.  That was a timeless moment right there.

 

About the only good moment of his regarding 9/11.

[NorthSideSox72]

You mentioned Bush post-9-11.  Who can forget the image of him standing on a pile of rubble with a bullhorn telling the firefighters that we're gonna get the bastards who did this.  That was a timeless moment right there.

 

I can't believe I am about to do this, but here goes...

 

As much as I despise this President, that particular moment was NOT scripted. Have any of you read Woodward's books? Or the stories published here and there by Bush's former aides? Getting up on that pile was actually more his idea than anyone else's. His PR people had other plans originally. Lots of things about that trip were scripted, but that was not one of them.

 

Now, for me, there were a lot of other moments more inspiring at Ground Zero. And I certainly realize that Bush was doing a little grandstanding there. But I do believe he meant well, in his own inept way.

 

And that article posted from the NYT wasn't about that moment at all, it was about all of Bush's mistakes since then.

 

So I refuse to flame out on Bush here. He's screwed the pouch on dozens of other things, but he did what he thought was right on this one, even he has since wandered WAY off the path.

[Mercy!]

Yeah, it's too bad we can't cherry pick the actions for which we will later be remembered and for which we will be judged. History will be merciless. And fair.