September 3, 2005 latimes.com : National News

NEWS ANALYSIS
Bush Tries for Damage Control at a Critical Point
By Doyle McManus, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON - It took him most of a week to get there, but President
Bush accomplished several goals Friday on his tour of the devastation left
by Hurricane Katrina across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He brought
comfort to some of the uncounted homeless. He lent encouragement to
emergency workers battling to save those still in danger.

And, not least, he launched a rescue mission to restore his own
image after mounting criticism of an apparent shortage of federal
leadership.

During four days of chaos in New Orleans, Bush and his aides had
issued upbeat statements that help was on the way. But in the face of
televised images of horrifying anarchy, some senior Republicans warned the
White House that it needed to change its tone.

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a potential GOP presidential
candidate, called the situation "an embarrassment," and other Republicans
said they had privately urged the White House to act.

"It was a sluggish response, almost a White House in slow motion,"
said David Gergen, a former advisor to Presidents Reagan and Clinton.
"Americans expect not only to see their president on the scene, but a firm
hand on the tiller. That wasn't there. There was nobody in charge."

Questions about whether anyone is in charge of the nation's affairs
are never a good thing for a president. But the post-hurricane crisis
arrived at an especially perilous moment for Bush, whose popularity has
been battered by rising gasoline prices and public unease over the war in
Iraq.

Political analysts said it was too early to tell whether the issue
could affect the next congressional election, at the midpoint of Bush's
term in 2006.

"It's too far out to extrapolate," said Charlie Cook, an independent
political analyst. "But for now, House and Senate Republicans are pretty
much joined at the hip with the president.. When he falls in the polls,
it's not good for them."

On Friday morning, Bush acknowledged for the first time that all was
not well.

"The results are not acceptable," he told reporters as he left the
White House for the Gulf Coast. "I want to assure the people of the
affected areas and this country that we'll deploy the assets necessary to
get the situation under control."

Later, in Biloxi, Miss., Bush fine-tuned his message, saying the
federal government - his administration - had done everything it could,
only to be overwhelmed by nature. "I am satisfied with the [federal]
response," Bush said. "I'm not satisfied with all the results.. I'm
certainly not denigrating the efforts of anybody. But the results can be
better in New Orleans, and I intend to work with the folks to make it
better."

To underline the message, he made a point of praising the chief of
the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael D. Brown, who coordinated
federal efforts to prepare for the storm.

Bush's statements appeared aimed at delivering a carefully targeted
message: The "results" in New Orleans have not been good, but that doesn't
mean anyone in the Bush administration failed to prepare adequately for
the hurricane.

"It's as if he's trying to have it both ways," Gergen said.

And at the end of the day, standing on the tarmac at Louis Armstrong
New Orleans International Airport in Kenner, the president struck an
upbeat note. He called for a national recovery effort and joked that its
goal would be to rebuild a hard-partying city "where I used to come . to
enjoy myself, occasionally too much."

"I understand we got a lot of work to do," Bush said. "And I
understand it seems dark right now. But by working together and pulling
together and capturing that great spirit of our country, a great city will
rise again."

Gergen, who now teaches at the John F. Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, said he believed Bush had made a strong if belated
effort at correcting his administration's slow start.

"He made a pivot today that was important: He acknowledged that the
results have been unacceptable," Gergen said. "That was an important
embrace of reality that was missing from their early statements. It gives
him a chance to rally.

"If food pours in, if the National Guard pours in, he's pivoted out
of a period of fumbling into a period of 'We're taking charge.' "

"I think he still has time to recover politically, and I think it's
likely he will," Gergen said. "He's good at this. You'll see a better Bush
during the next few days, in charge and compassionate. But if he doesn't,
there's going to be a serious political price to pay."

"They seem to be getting it together," agreed James Carville, a
former advisor to Clinton. "How much damage will the picture of people
spending four or five days on rooftops do? That depends on how well it
goes from here on out."

First Lady Laura Bush was blunter than her husband when she visited
hurricane refugees in Lafayette, La., on Friday, faulting federal agencies
for their performance. "This response is not an adequate response," she
said. "This is not the kind of response the federal government wants. We
know that we can do it better."

Bush and other officials have attempted to stave off the question of
whether the federal government was sufficiently prepared for the storm,
saying the focus now should be on recovery efforts. "This is not a time to
get into any finger-pointing or politics," White House spokesman Scott
McClellan said Thursday, when reporters asked whether Bush believed the
government had done all it could.

Administration officials acknowledge that Congress and the media
will inevitably investigate the reasons for the government's uneven
response. But by focusing on the recovery effort, and by attempting to
show that Bush is in charge, they hope to blunt the impact of any adverse
findings.

"Why a White House that was so adept in most of the first term has
misjudged two or three big calls in its second term . it's puzzling,"
Gergen said. He cited Bush's abortive drive for changes in Social Security
and his handling of the antiwar protests led by Cindy Sheehan, a
Vacaville, Calif., woman whose son died in Iraq, as earlier missteps.

"I think they're engulfed in a second-term syndrome," he said. "They
may just be tired. They've had a long time in the traces, and it's been
hard work. Usually the White House team changes by the beginning of a
second term, but this one hasn't."

The White House's uncertain response was all the more puzzling
because Bush has often been an effective communicator in chief. During the
president's first term, his show of resolve after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave him a significant
boost in popularity and prestige.

But in terms of political image-making, the chaos in New Orleans
could pose an even greater challenge than Sept. 11.

"On 9/11, we were attacked by an enemy.. But there's no foreign
enemy here. There's nobody to blame," Gergen said.

The terrorism, "as awful and terrible as it was, didn't overwhelm
the government's capacity" to respond, said Donald Kettl, a political
scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. "Here it is impossible to
deflect the issue."

Bush may also remember another presidential response to disaster:
His father's reaction to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, when that Bush
administration was criticized by many Florida officials for taking as long
as a week to get relief operations running.

"We learned from that one," said Carville, whose candidate, Clinton,
was running against the elder Bush at the time. "When something like this
happens, you got to get out in front of it. When we had our first
disaster, the floods in Iowa in 1993, Clinton was right there, [saying] 'I
feel your pain.' "

Carville said Bush faces two dangers in his response to Katrina.

"The real danger they have is that people may see a linkage to Iraq,
which is Bush's signature issue," he said, noting that some have asked
whether National Guard deployments overseas slowed the response to
Katrina. "If people draw a connection between the two - and I don't know
that they will - that's trouble."

The other potential problem for the president, he said, is that the
aftermath of Katrina might continue to be a problem for a long time - both
in Carville's native Louisiana and in the hearing rooms of Congress. "It's
not going to go away," he warned. "It's going to be here six months from
now."

White House aides said Bush plans to maintain his focus on the issue
and might revisit the damaged areas.

In an unusual move, the president decided to give his weekly
Saturday radio address live this morning before television cameras in the
White House Rose Garden, a way to snag an additional day of television
coverage for his message of engagement and concern.

Democrats have largely held their fire so far, although the truce
may not last long. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and several liberal
Democratic House members have sharply criticized the administration's
response to Katrina, but most nationally prominent Democrats, including
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.),
have been relatively mild.

"When your opponent is in the process of hurting himself, don't get
in the way," said one top Democratic strategist, who spoke on condition he
not be identified. "There will be ample time for recrimination later."

Richard A. Brody, a political scholar at Stanford University, noted
that it was unlikely that any single issue could change public attitudes
dramatically at this point in Bush's presidency. "The conditions are
really not ripe for any big movement, because we're five years into this
presidency, and the polarization [of public opinion] is pretty intense."

After Sept. 11, Brody noted, Bush's popularity soared because many
Democrats and independents admired his response. "Over time, it's become
harder for him to appeal to Democrats and independents," he said.

But with Bush already slipping in the polls, more setbacks would
weaken his ability to carry out his second-term agenda, making it less
likely he would succeed in making his tax cuts permanent, changing Social
Security or eliminating the estate tax, scholars said.

"You can easily imagine the argument that we need to invest more in
the public good," said George C. Edwards III of Texas A&M University.
"It's going to make it a lot harder for him . to spend money on other
things - Iraq and whatever - at the expense of domestic needs."

Is it fair to judge a president on the federal bureaucracy's
response to a natural disaster? Yes, Edwards said. "This is a legitimate
test of presidential management.. After all, the president is the chief
executive."

Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein, Edwin Chen, Sonni Efron and
Richard Simon contributed to this analysis.

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