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DID BUSH DO RIGHT THING? BUSINESS-AS-USUAL SCHEDULE PRECEDED TAKING DIRECT ROLE |
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by Jon Kamman
The Arizona Republic As the White House and Congress call for investigations into "unacceptable" fumbling of the Hurricane Katrina emergency, and with the reassignment Friday of the federal official who led aid efforts, President Bush's own response to the crisis has come into question. A timeline of Bush's activities as Katrina wrought destruction shows him keeping informed but adhering closely to a business-as-usual schedule before taking a direct role in managing the crisis. The timeline indicates that Bush was slow to grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe and may have been following an arm's-length policy that has become somewhat routine for presidents in response to natural disasters. Was the president ill-advised to follow through with two days of scheduled appearances, including one in the Phoenix area, then spend a night in Texas as the crisis unfolded? "I'm Monday-morning quarterbacking on this," said U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., "but, yeah, you'd have to say yes." Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., responded, "I don't know." McCain said he found the overall federal response deficient, but he said causes should be left to a bipartisan investigation to determine. "I don't know what information the president had at the time and what he didn't have," McCain said. "So, I think all of that's going to be reviewed, and I'm sure that will be part of this commission." Another Arizona Republican congressman, Jim Kolbe, said, "I'm not going to try to second-guess this thing," but added that Bush's actions and the quality of information he was given should be open to scrutiny. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the time for such an inquiry is not in the midst of a continuing emergency. University of Vermont Professor John P. Burke, a political scientist with expertise in the workings of the White House, said that in lesser disasters, it's appropriate for the president to steer clear as state and local officials, with federal assistance, lead recovery efforts. "The danger is to sort of 'presidentialize' it," he said. "Once the president becomes a prime actor in anything, then it all of a sudden becomes a presidential responsibility." The question in Bush's case is whether he should have assumed responsibility more quickly, Burke said. The president stepped off Air Force One at Luke Air Force Base in suburban Phoenix some six hours after Katrina tore into the Gulf Coast early Monday, Aug. 29. First reports had brought a sense of relief that New Orleans had not taken a direct hit. Bush spoke to senior citizens in El Mirage about Medicare. He expressed concern about the hurricane but gave more attention to immigration and the war in Iraq. He said that during the flight from Texas, he had talked by telephone with Michael Chertoff, who as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security is the top overseer of federal emergency responses. But Bush, saying the two had talked about immigration, did not mention any hurricane discussions. In a news briefing on the plane, White House press secretary Scott McLellan said Bush had spoken with Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and that during the flight, aides to Bush had conducted a teleconference with emergency-response officials. Brown, a political appointee whose resume has been found to contain inaccuracies, was reassigned Friday after heading federal response efforts. Air Force One departed from Luke before noon on the day of the storm, taking the president to his Medicare appearance in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif. On the plane, the president received another update from Brown, and staffers held another teleconference. Sometime that afternoon, the first levee gave way in New Orleans. Bush went ahead with his forum for seniors. "A rough reconstruction of the flooding . . . shows that the huge scale of the overlapping floods - one fast, one slow - should have been clear to some officials by midafternoon Monday," the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported this week. After his Medicare appearance, the president flew to San Diego and stayed overnight in the posh Hotel Del Coronado. While he was sleeping, more levees gave way, turning most of the nation's 35th-largest city into a swamp. On Tuesday morning, Aug. 30, Bush received another update, then headed to the Naval Air Station North Island, where he spoke mostly about Iraq in a commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. That afternoon, he returned to his Texas ranch for another overnight stay before ending his vacation two days early. With New Orleans in squalor on Wednesday, Aug. 31, Bush started the morning at his ranch leading a teleconference, his first on rescue and evacuation efforts. He also directed officials to work on long-term strategies for dealing with displaced people. He then headed for Washington, D.C., to lead a late-afternoon meeting of a crisis-management team. Along the way, he took a look at the devastation along the Gulf Coast as Air Force One dipped as low as 1,700 feet. Bush spent most of Thursday, Sept. 1, dealing with storm issues. He appointed his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to head charitable relief efforts. He said there would be a "zero tolerance" policy for looting, price-gouging and insurance fraud. The following morning, Friday, Sept. 2, he characterized the federal response as "not acceptable" before leaving to inspect the region. Within hours, in Alabama, he was praising the work of FEMA's Brown, saying, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Why Bush was seemingly so flat-footed in acting was a mystery to some. "I've been struggling to try to understand this, as well," University of Vermont's Burke said. "For us academics, this is going to be one of those decision episodes we'll be studying for quite awhile." Robert Denhardt, director of the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University, said, "To some extent a president has to assume that the people working for him are doing the right thing." But an emergency of the magnitude of Katrina deserved more attention, he said. "This all was so predictable," Denhardt said. "It appears to be a huge case of failure of management and maybe planning, not just at the presidential level but several levels down." A president wants to avoid "federalizing" what needs to be addressed at the state level, Burke said. He also said that dealings between local and federal officials, especially of different political parties, could have stymied action in the New Orleans crisis. Still, Burke said, "I think anybody watching over the weekend and the next couple of days would have been fairly alarmed." White House spokesman Allen Abney did not comment when asked whether Bush's own actions in the days after the hurricane will be a focus of the review. He referred a reporter to earlier White House briefings, although transcripts show that the question was not addressed in those sessions. In a briefing this week, McClellan emphasized that the president "hasn't outlined the investigation that he's talked about making sure that we lead." Whether it will be conducted by an independent body hasn't been decided, he said. Meanwhile, Democrats in the House said Thursday that they would not participate in a proposed joint investigation with Senate Republicans, complaining that the panel would be "stacked" against them. |
