Waiting for a Leader
The New York Times
Thursday 01 September 2005
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life
yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the
need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual
in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was
needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an
Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice,
generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He
advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash,
grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come
back. But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place
abandoned to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to
wonder exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds
of thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care.
Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril.
Public health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout
southern Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline
will be available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a
moment when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and
spot prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.
Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things
happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never
been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's
demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness
- suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.
While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate
needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so
inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National
Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in
this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers
permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held
back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off
to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the
gaping holes in the area's flood protection?
It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily
announced, America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this
crisis. Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are
right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of
future hurricanes. But since this administration won't acknowledge
that global warming exists, the chances of leadership seem minimal.
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