Today is John McCain's 72nd birthday and the big news, rightly so, is his choice of Governor Palin as his running mate for the 2008 elections. (Serious Link | Not Serious Link) But I'm not ready to discuss that yet. I want to talk about something else.
Today is also the three year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast. As it approached, it wasn't entirely known how extensive the damage was going to be, though it was recognized as one of the biggest and baddest storms seen. The National Weather Service offered strong warnings well in advance of landfall and some government officials urged a complete evacuation of area.
We all know the rest, a botched Federal response, especially by FEMA, our leaders turning down offers of help from other nations, and Bush dithered. A lot of people saw the pictures of him playing guitar for senior citizens while New Orleans drowned.
But there was something else that Bush was doing while a category 5 storm made landfall. He was attending a birthday party for John McCain:
It doesn't matter how much distance I get from the events of Katrina, every time I remember that this was taken while people were dying, I recoil in disgust. I don't want to mince words here. It's an absolute travesty that my president and a self-appointed populist "Maverick" were celebrating anything.
But why bring this up now? Three years after the fact? Two reasons:
- McCain's running for president now, and he continues to browbeat Obama on this notion of "judgement". He claims to have better ability to lead this nation because he has better judgement. That's not what I see at all. In fact, these pictures show a criminal lack of judgement. McCain wants me to trust that he can more capably lead a country when he can't figure out that having some birthday cake with Bush as a photo-op is a bad thing? While an entire city was being washed away McCain decided to party. How is this better judgement?
- The other reason this is important now is the Republican National Convention is scheduled to start next week, and another potentially destructive hurricane veers towards the Gulf Coast. The Republicans are speaking of postponing the convention until after Gustav has run its course but they're not doing this out of concern for the lives of the people in the region, or because so many of the Republican staffers who would be at the convention are needed to help coordinate a response but because "images of Republicans partying in Minneapolis-St. Paul could be an embarrassing reminder of the Bush administration's delayed response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago."
See, it would appear that this time, three years later, McCain has used his "judgement", but it would seem that it is more to protect his image. And while it shows he is at least capable of learning from his mistakes, that is cold comfort to the people who are still not able to return home so many years later.
A few days after his birthday party in Arizona with the president, McCain travelled to New Orleans and said:
"Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way it's been handled."(source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gopstorm29-2008aug29,0,1057901.story)
In fact, the LA Times article I linked to earlier notes:
There is perhaps no issue over which McCain has been more critical of the Bush administration than its handling of the 2005 storm, which the Arizona Republican has called "disgraceful."(source: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-gopstorm29-2008aug29,0,1057901.story)
The real question I have is this:
Is it just the response to Katrina that was "disgusting"? Is it possible that McCain was also thinking of himself standing on that tarmac laughing with President Bush at the collapsing icing while tragedy befell America? Is it possible that McCain realizes how grotesque it really was to publicly slap backs and eat cake while the levees burst? I can only hope so. But any remorse he may have felt after the fact does not assuage my anger or frustration at him as a person, and as a 'leader'.
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