The Disaster President 


One joke that can be aimed at any governor who announces his candidacy for president is, "Since (so-and-so) became governor, every county in (state) has been declared a disaster area. Now he wants to do the same for the country..." 

Since George W Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001, there have been four major disasters to strike the United States. While it is true that none of them could have been prevented from happening, steps could have been taken before they actually occurred, that could have made them much less catastrophic.

The first of these disasters was the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I have long maintained that Bush's leadership was by and large lacking in the aftermath of these attacks. I don't have any inherent problem with his having taken out the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but he is creating more terrorists than he is killing or arresting by his actions, especially in Iraq. I don't know if the attacks could have been prevented. A recent special on the National Geographic Channel shed an eerie light on things. I do not doubt that, if all of the appropriate signals had been observed, the only missing piece of the puzzle would have been the exact date of the attacks.

There is a pervasive economic belief, to which this President at least partially subscribes, which essentially argues that private industry can generally do anything the Federal government can, only cheaper and more efficiently. For more information on this belief, check out the web page of the Club for Growth . Generally, the idea is, privatize as much as you can to reduce spending, and, cut taxes. If you need to repudiate this theory, you need look no further than the blackout in the Northeast in the Summer of 2002.

When it comes to private industry, the only motivation for upgrading or improving on what is already there, is when the existing system is failing or becoming more expensive than it's worth. Why spend the money to fix what isn't broken? In real terms, we saw an aging infrastructure that was badly in need of updates and revisions meet head-on with an energy policy that really hasn't changed much since the 1950's. In the time since then, we've had three separate people act as president who have a pre-politics background in the energy industry. (Lyndon Johnson, George H W Bush, and George W Bush). Surely one of them must have known that something would need to change.

Next was the disintegration of the Space Shuttle Columbia in January, 2003. Certainly not as dramatic as the other events listed here, and even not as dramatic as the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger 17 years earlier, but it was a disaster not only in terms of the loss of life and technology, but it also acts as a lesson for recognizing the impact of a problem and fixing problems as they arise. NASA's management may have contributed to the accident.

And finally (and most recently), we have the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I don't know if the city of New Orleans will ever be able to be fully rebuilt, or what the final cost will be, but Sen. Harry Reid estimated yesterday that it will cost upwards of $150 billion to cleanup and rebuild. While that won't certainly come entirely from the government, the dollar amount doesn't surprise me. Strange, but the devastation probably wouldn't have been as severe if New Orleans had gotten the $11 million it needed to shore up the levees. How much less it would have cost if the levees had been properly maintained, who knows? Certainly more than $11 million.

Some people are saying that global warming contributed to the strength of the hurricane. While that may be at least a part of the reason, I doubt it's the whole thing. Either way, the cost cutting and infrastructure issues that may have contributed to the Northeast Blackout certainly made Katrina worse than she needed to be. Plus, as I write these words, Hurricanes Maria, Nate, and Ophelia are all spinning somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

I don't know that we can simply blame George W. Bush for the fact that these four disasters happened, All four were the byproduct of years -- and in at least two of the four cases, decades -- of complacence and inaction.

Still, with everything that has happened in the last 4-plus years, I think it's safe to declare the presidency of George W. Bush a disaster. 

Posted: Mon - September 5, 2005 at 09:45 PM          

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