www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1103581,00.html
A bungled initial response to Katrina exposed the perils of a rigid, insu lar White House. Inside Bush's plan to show he isn't isolated By MIKE ALLEN / WASHINGTON President Bush was seated in the White House Situation Room, watching mil itary and disaster officials beaming in from the Gulf Coast on the giant screen of his secure video- teleconferencing system. It had been nearly a week since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, ripping gashes i n the Superdome and swamping homes up to their eaves. Bush, more fidgety than usual, was hearing a jumble of conflicting reports about the numbe r of refugees in the Convention Center and the whereabouts of two trucks and trailers loaded with water and food. Furious, he interrupted and gl ared at the camera transmitting his image back to Mississippi. "I know y 'all are trying as hard as you can, but it ain't cuttin' it," the Comman der in Chief barked. This was not so much a moment of executive command as one that betrayed B ush's growing sense that his presidency was taking a beating too. A TIME poll conducted last week shows how badly it has been wounded: his overa ll approval rating has dropped to 42%, his lowest mark since taking offi ce. And while 36% of respondents said they were satisfied with his expla nation of why the government was not able to provide relief to hurricane victims sooner, 57% said they were dissatisfied--an ominous result for a politician who banks on his image as a straight shooter. Longtime Bush watchers say they are not shocked that he missed his moment --one of his most trusted confidants calls him "a better third- and four th-quarter player," who focuses and delivers when he sees the stakes. Wh at surprised them was that he still appeared to be stutter-stepping in t he second week of the crisis, struggling to make up for past lapses inst ead of taking control with a grand gesture. Just as Katrina exposed the lurking problems of race and poverty, it also revealed the limitations o f Bush's rigid, top-down approach to the presidency. "The extremely high ly centralized control of the government--the engine of Bush's success-- failed him this time," a key adviser said. The missteps on Katrina came at a crucial moment in Bush's second term, w hen his top legislative priority at home, Social Security reform, was al ready on life support and the war in Iraq was becoming a mounting econom ic and political burden. The Administration that had been determined to defy history and ward off the second-term curse--and early lame-duck sta tus--by controlling the agenda and seizing opportunities appears increas ingly at the mercy of events, at home and abroad. And as if the West Wing were suddenly snakebit, his franchise player, sen ior adviser and deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, was on the disabled li st for part of last week, working from home after being briefly hospital ized with painful kidney stones. Bush has always said the Presidency is about doing big things, and a frie nd who chatted with him one evening in July said he seemed to be craving a fresh mission even though the one he has pursued in Iraq is far from being on a steady footing. "He was looking for the next really important thing to do," the friend said. But when it did, he did not immediately show that he sensed its magnitude . On the Monday that Hurricane Katrina landed and the Crescent City bega n drowning, Bush was joshing with Senator John McCain on the tarmac of a n Air Force base in Arizona, posing with a melting birthday cake. Like a scene out of a Michael Moore mockumentary, he was heading into a long-p lanned Medicare round table at a local country club, joking that he had "spiced up" his entourage by bringing the First Lady, then noting to the audience that he had phoned Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertof f from Air Force One. He was talking about immigration, and the Go vernor was Arizona's. The day after Katrina's landfall, Bush awoke in San Diego and just after 5 am local time talked to an aide about the seriousness of the storm, then convened an emergency conference call of his top staff. He was sche duled to spend a few more nights at the ranch, but an aide said he blurt ed out, "We're going back." Bush also said he wanted Cabinet members rec alled from vacations. At a Cabinet meeting last week, according to a par ticipant, Bush said he knew he had "a big problem to solve." From tarmac to Cabinet room, the President's performance was uneven at th e very least, and associates say that can be explained by several factor s Some are specific to his CEO style, others endemic to second terms, b ut all of them came together in early September much like Katrina itself . The first was his elongated summer vacation: Bush upped to nearly five weeks his traditional month of working vacation at the Crawford ranch, a vacuum that always alarmed his aides because it gave others an opening for capturing the news agenda. While the staff agonized about whether h e should try to head off mounting criticism of the Iraq war by meeting a second time with Cindy Sheehan to discuss the death of her soldier son, Bush rejected the idea, saying part of the job is to expect protesters wherever he goes and he needs to "go on with my life, to keep a balanced life." In addition, former aides say there has always been enormous pressure on White House officials to take only the most vital decisions to Bush and let the bureaucracy deal with everything else. Bush does not appear to t ap sources deep inside his government for information, the way his fathe r or Bill Clinton did, preferring to get reports through channels. A hig hly screened information chain is fine when everything is going well, bu t in a crisis it can hinder. Louisiana officials say it took hours for G overnor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco to reach Bush (although when she did, he talked to her soothingly, according to White House officials). "His i nner circle takes pride in being able to tell him 'everything is under c ontrol,' when in this case it was not," said a former aide. "The whole i dea that you have to only burden him with things 'that rise to his level ' bit them this time." A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President's increasing isolation. Bush's bubble has grown mor e hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or ab le to bring him bad news--or tell him when he's wrong. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described t he perils of correcting the boss. "The first time I told him he was wron g, he started yelling at me," the aide recalled about a session during t he first term. "Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, 'All right. But as the Bush era begins to wane, some remaining aides lack the chops t o set him right when he is off course. Several of his closest advisers-- including Condoleezza Rice, Alberto Gonzales and Karen Hughes--have left the West Wing for Cabinet posts or jobs in other agencies. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, has never been mistaken for James Baker, the man wh o made a minor career out of setting Bush's father right. And Bush has f illed a number of lesser spots around the government with political hack s and patronage candidates--most embarrassingly Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who was yanked from o n-site supervision of Katrina on Friday. "Katrina has shown the incredible weakness of the notion that you can hav e weak players in key spots because the only people who matter are in th e White House," said a lobbyist who is tight with the Administration. "Y ou can't have a Mike Brown at FEMA unless you can guarantee that there i sn't going to be a catastrophe." The result is a kind of echo chamber in which good news can prevail over bad--even when there is a surfeit of evidence to the contrary. For examp le, a source tells TIME that four days after Katrina struck, Bush himsel f briefed his father and former President Clinton in a way that left too rosy an impression of the progress made. "It bore no resemblance to wha t was actually happening," said someone familiar with the presentation...
|
http://csua.com/feed/