Daily Kos' freivogel: What Obama Needs to Do About Samoa

[Louisiana1976]

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First of all, any disaster resulting in the loss of life is a tragedy. We can all agree on that. George W. Bush made a monstrous PR mistake in not getting himself to the area hit by Katrina quickly enough, but the enormity of that error corresponds to the size of the region and the loss of life that was clearly occurring. Thankfully, fewer people have perished in Samoa, but many will have perished nonetheless. President Obama cannot afford to do any worse than Bush did with Katrina, but I think he's already in good shape for having immediately declared it a disaster area (as opposed to blaming the state government for not having requested it, as did the Bush administration about Louisiana not having made that request in time).

Also, we should expect that President Obama, despite his exceedingly full plate (HCR, Afghanistan, the Olympics-- maybe that's not so important right now?-- the economy, and a solid dozen or so unfulfilled progressive initiatives many of us had hoped to see take flight by now), is going to get pounced on by everyone who supported Bush in 2005 even as Katrina happened and his administration didn't do nearly enough. If Obama gets on a plane today, right wing pundits will ask why he didn't do it on Monday (which was actually before the earthquake and ensuing tsunami). They are going to pounce on him for being in Copenhagen while the cleanup continues on American Samoa. Not sure there's a defense against that type of attack, but we should expect it.

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more...http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/30/788090/-Mr.-President,-Heres-What-You-Need-To-Do-About-Samoa