When the Levees Broke

Anniversary Draws Bush to Gulf Coast
His visit next week aims to counter Democrats' plans to focus on the slow Katrina response.
By Peter Wallsten and Maura Reynolds, Times Staff Writers
August 23, 2006

WASHINGTON — As next week's anniversary of Hurricane Katrina triggers recollections of rooftop refugees and massive devastation along the Gulf Coast, the White House has begun a public relations blitz to counteract Democrats' plans to use the government's tardy response and the region's slow recovery in the coming congressional elections.

President Bush will visit the area Monday and Tuesday, including an overnight stay in New Orleans. He probably will visit the city's Lower 9th Ward, the heavily black area that remains mired in debris, and is expected to meet with storm victims.

The trip will force Bush to revisit sensitive racial issues that arose with the flooding of New Orleans; at that time, civil rights leaders charged that the White House was slow to respond because so many victims were black. GOP strategists acknowledged that the administration's failure to act quickly was a significant setback in their efforts to court traditionally Democratic African American voters.

The White House announced Bush's visit Tuesday as a phalanx of administration officials stood before reporters to argue that billions of dollars had flowed to the region and millions more was on the way. The plans for the trip were disclosed one day after Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales announced that he was sending additional lawyers and resources to the city to fight fraud and abuse.

At Tuesday's briefing, White House aides passed out folders and fact sheets that painted a picture of aggressive recovery efforts. A packet from the Army Corps of Engineers, responsible for the levees that were breached after the storm, carried the slogan: "One Team: Relevant, Ready, Responsible, Reliable."

Donald E. Powell, the White House official in charge of recovery plans, declared that Bush was "fulfilling his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast better and stronger."

The administration's coordinated response is the latest example of White House officials maneuvering to cast a positive light on a campaign issue expected to hurt Republicans. Just this week, Bush acknowledged public anxiety over Katrina, along with concern about the war in Iraq and rising gasoline prices. But he defended his record and accused the Democrats of weakness, particularly on national security issues.

The White House effort comes as the Democrats, who plan to challenge Republicans on national security in this year's midterm election campaign, are portraying the government's response to Katrina as evidence that Bush failed to fix inadequacies exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks.

A report being released today by top Democrats, titled "Broken Promises: The Republican Response to Katrina," features a picture of Bush during his Sept. 15, 2005, speech in New Orleans' Jackson Square, in which he promised to oversee "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen."

The report argues that every aspect of recovery — including housing, business loans, healthcare, education and preparedness — "suffers from a failed Republican response marked by unfulfilled promises, cronyism, waste, fraud, and abuse."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada is scheduled to spend Thursday in New Orleans with fellow Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana to kick off what they call the "Hope and Recovery Tour." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco plans to arrive this weekend with about 20 other Democrats for additional events.

White House officials declined Tuesday to offer many details of Bush's trip. Spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush would travel Monday to two Mississippi towns devastated by the storm, Gulfport and Biloxi, before arriving in New Orleans. He is expected to attend an ecumenical worship service at New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral, the backdrop to his Jackson Square address.

Leaders of the recovery effort said Tuesday that although progress had been slow in some areas, Bush would be able to point to successes in some New Orleans neighborhoods, including the famed French Quarter and the Garden District. However, neither area was damaged as severely as the Lower 9th Ward. The question for White House schedulers is how much to accentuate the positives while acknowledging the negatives.

"If you go to most of the city you see enormous progress," said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and vice chairman of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. "They are probably going to go to the Lower 9th Ward, which is very honest of them, because that's the place you see the least progress."

Isaacson, a New Orleans native, said he considered many of the Democrats' critiques to be unfair. He credited the White House with safeguarding millions of dollars in grants for housing and levee reconstruction, some of which was only approved this summer amid a contentious budget debate.

"They protected that housing money and the levee money in the appropriation process when every congressman was looking at it greedily," he said.

If you've seen When the Levees Broke, on HBO, you know this isn't going to fly. New Orleans still has piles of garbage on the street like a couple of armored divisions ran through the town. It's amazing. They can't even get the crap from the street, much less identify the dead.

The tragedy of New Orleans is way beyond some cheap PR stunt. People, and not casually, call it ethnic cleansing. They can't get the insurance to pay for their homes. Sure, there's progress in downtown, but most of the city isn't downtown.

FEMA didn't fail. FEMA is still failing

That's the thing people don't get. This isn't history, it is current events. The people of the region feel abandoned and with good reason.

My mother was watching the documentary, and she was increasingly angry at Ray Nagin, who seemed to be amazingly upbeat. Meanwhile, people are telling stories on a par of watching their parents selected for gassing at Auschwitz or surviving Omaha Beach. One man watched his wife float away on her wheelchair as he held on a branch for 12 hours.

Katrina is a story of great failure and some true heroism. The Coast Guard pilots and rescue swimmers who flew into a strange city (they operate in the Gulf) and risked crashing their helos because of downed powerlines, are some of them. Flying 16 hours a day and taking insane risks. The Army and Navy pilots who joined them took similar risks.

But the fact is that America broke down during Katrina and that started in the White House and went all the way down the line. The New Orleans police force broke under the strain while the Army went unused. Just a few air drops and special forces teams could have done what they do around the world, feed people and restore order. But they went unused as FEMA fumbled along.

Scenes which should have never happened in the US did, and no Washington PR stunt can blunt that. Bush failed, badly, his government failed and is still failing.

Some people may have forgotten. But not New Orleans, not black America.