Bush's character is Bush's destiny

Frank Rich places Bush's failed behavior as President in perspective. Katrina is just 9/11 deja vu - but worse.

This administration would like us to forget a lot, starting with the simple fact that next Sunday is the fourth anniversary of the day we were attacked by Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Even before Katrina took command of the news, Sept. 11, 2005, was destined to be a half-forgotten occasion, distorted and sullied by a grotesquely inappropriate Pentagon-sponsored country music jamboree on the Mall. But hard as it is to reflect upon so much sorrow at once, we cannot allow ourselves to forget the real history surrounding 9/11; it is the Rosetta stone for what is happening now. If we are to pull ourselves out of the disasters of Katrina and Iraq alike, we must live in the real world, not the fantasyland of the administration's faith-based propaganda. Everything connects.

Though history is supposed to occur first as tragedy, then as farce, even at this early stage we can see that tragedy is being repeated once more as tragedy. From the president's administration's inattention to threats before 9/11 to his disappearing act on the day itself to the reckless blundering in the ill-planned war of choice that was 9/11's bastard offspring, Katrina is déjà vu with a vengeance.

The president's declaration that "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees" has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center." The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of "Stuff happens" for a coup de grâce.

This administration exists in a fantasyland of its own making. Unfortunately reality keeps creeping up and overwhelming their ability to get the right-wing echo-chamber media and the power of the right-wing fundamentalist media to drown it out.

Still they work so hard at it. They treat all professionals and scientists as though the administration consisted of tobacco executives and the professionals and scientists were threatening their profits with the truth. See the right-wing media above, and remember that they either rewrite all government science reports to support their profits or simply stop publishing the most damaging reports.

But as the response to Katrina has shown, this is not a purely public relations activity. They actually don't look at the real needs of America if those needs contradict their right-wing ideology. The result has been government that doesn't work. First they failed completely in the occupation of Iraq and now they have failed completely in the disaster preparations and recovery from Katrina.

This is not an accident. To these people, the visions and myths of fundamentalist religion and right-wing ideology both trump actual reality and facts. They plan and work towards the myths and ignore any nasty reality that tries to get in their way.

Let's see what they do to ignore and drown out the death rate from Katrina and $3 to $4 per gallon gasoline mixed with inflation, farm failures and a drop in the gross domestic product.

Oh, wait. Those are all the fault of nature and the governor of Louisiana, aren't they? Bush CAN'T be held responsible for those, can he? Just because he appointed incompetents who failed to read the myriad predictions of exactly what has happened and failed to prepare for it. Can he?

Sure he can. The President is responsible for everything the government does or fails to do. That's what a much better President than Bush meant when he stated of the Oval Office "The buck stops here."