Richard Louv (San Diego UT): A political culture with no clothes

[question everything]

A political culture with no clothes

September 6, 2005

(snip)

While Bush, unlike Davis, will in all likelihood serve out his term, and cannot run for re-election, any presidential hopes that brother Jeb may have had, were blown away last week – along with the emperor's clothes, by Katrina. But Bush wasn't the only politician to lose his toga. Everyone was fair game.

People of New Orleans were mad "at the governor, they're mad at the mayor, and if I was in office, they'd get mad at me," Louisiana's former senator, John B. Breaux, admired by the White House, told The New York Times. "They don't care if you're an elephant or a donkey. You've got to be on top of it. You've got to be aggressive. You've got to show that something is being done." More to the point, you've got to limit the tragedy in the first place.

Trying to pin responsibility on Bush, or the head of Federal Emergency Management Agency or any other government official can be a handy way to avoid the larger issue: a political culture – Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, whatever – that seems incapable of thinking ahead of the next primary.

This is the same political culture that based a war on two assumptions: that a dictator was hording weapons of mass destruction, and that liberated Iraqis would offer only kisses and bouquets to the foreign invader. This political culture (which included the acquiescent New York Times, along with the majority of voters) ignored the warnings, tut-tutted at the lessons of history and was not prepared for a worst-case scenario. As with the war, we were warned about the inevitability of Katrina – often by government officials themselves. The Army Corps of Engineers has been warning about Louisiana's levees for years, but Congress has refused to finance the needed upgrades.

(snip)

Woe be to the good public officials and office-holders who do warn about clouds on the horizon and have the temerity to suggest that we must pay or sacrifice in order to protect ourselves. Too often, those officials are soon looking for jobs in the private sector – or called unpatriotic.

(snip)"

This is the crux of our political problem: fleeting reliance on short-term anecdotal reactions, rather than on long-term planning based on historical probabilities. We measure our future in miles instead of decades.

(snip)

Louv's column appears on Tuesdays. He can be reached via e-mail at [e-mail] or via www.thefuturesedge.com.


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050906/news_lz1e06louv.html

[movonne]

1. He should not serve of the rest of his term....we cannot have such

a really bad administration still in power...

[question everything]

2. high crimes and misdemeanors, not incompetency

said someone on a message board, are reasons for impeachemnt.

True, but the Republicans have already lowered the bar to include lying about one's very private affairs, so why not incompetency?

[phantom power]

3. I think it's a mistake to count these people out.

They still have the media on their side. Last week may have opened up some big cracks, but BushCo is still receiving plenty of favorable coverage for their gigantic CYA operation.

My neighbors have bought completely into the "blame the victim" spin that BushCo is spewing.