The Shrub Doesn't Fall Far From the Bush

From Niagara Falls Reporter:

Scientists might well start researching the question: Are questionable reactions to foreign crises, wars, hurricanes and the economy genetic?

The degree to which George W. Bush's presidency is mirroring his father's, and magnifying it, seems to indicate the answer is a ringing YES.

While Dubya's dad tended to respond a bit more rapidly when huge crises developed for the country -- and usually more prudently -- he sometimes displayed the same lack of focus, concentration and productive followup that his son is now getting torched for by citizens and media alike.

This writer was with Bush the Elder in the last week of August 1992, covering the current president's father in New England while he campaigned for re-election. When an aide informed him of the devastating effect of Hurricane Andrew, which had just hit south Florida, that president quickly canceled all political appearances and flew directly to the struggling state. But while he offered tsk-tsk bromides and isn't-this-awfuls, the father was roundly criticized for the delay that surrounded provision of meaningful federal aid to the 300 square miles of almost total devastation.

As the mammoth Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans last week, Bush the Younger doubled that lame performance in spades. He gave the initial appearance of not caring at all. Where are his political minders? Even as the monster storm hit, Bush the son was counseling victims from afar to just tough it out -- and was photographed happily strumming a guitar provided to him by country star Mark Wills at a meaningless San Diego event before flying back to his ranch. It could only have been worse in terms of bad symbolic publicity if Dubya had been handed Nero's fiddle to play.

Even as he started to react, Dubya failed to look after important details. His secretary of state was a noted no-show at the first Cabinet meeting called to respond to Katrina. The vacationing Condoleezza Rice -- a native of the similarly hard-hit Alabama -- was caught by vitriolic New York media shopping for thousand-dollar shoes at Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue, and later laughing to tears while attending a Monty Python comedy on Broadway.

There were other blunders in terms of federal response imagery. The newspaper trade publication "Editor and Publisher" noted that in Biloxi, Miss. -- also devastated by Katrina -- survivor victims of the storm who were gathered in a junior high school shelter waiting for help and food and medicine could look across the road and watch Air Force personnel performing calisthenics and playing basketball. Transportation was no excuse there. The potential responders could have aided the victims with a five-minute stroll.

When local reporters asked the base brass why they weren't helping relief efforts instead of following physical training routine, they were told picking up beach litter would be pointless at this juncture of the calamity.

Andrew was a Force Five storm that eventually totaled $43 billion in damage, killed 41 residents directly, boosted unemployment in south Florida to 14 percent, and wiped out almost 10 percent of Florida agriculture. Like Katrina, it veered northwest, gathered moisture and force over the warm Gulf of Mexico, and then lashed north to hit Louisiana and cause another couple of billion dollars' worth of damage. Bush the Elder eventually responded with massive assistance -- almost 30,000 military personnel, and enough tents and food for a like number of victims.

Ironically, in mid-August of last year, in the midst of his campaign for re-election, Bush the Younger toured Florida with his brother-governor Jeb -- two days after Hurricane Charley ripped Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte -- and commented on the slow response for which their father was criticized a dozen years before.

"That was then, this is now," said President George W. Bush. "The lesson is, respond quickly." Words that are surely ringing in Dubya's ears.