Here they come.
Hurricane Obama in Denver this week. Hurricane Gustav in the Gulf of Mexico next week.
The winds of blame are swirling, gaining force, creating the vortex of fear and resentment beloved by liberal politicians.
The question for John McCain and his millions of supporters: Which hurricane is more threatening?
And the bigger question for the Obama camp: How freely do we exploit hurricane fallout, human suffering, even death?
A hurricane named Gustav is charting its menacing course in the Caribbean. Experts believe it will roll into the vast Gulf and head toward the United States. With memories of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 quite fresh, federal government brass are descending on New Orleans even now, even though it is too early to know if New Orleans will be in Gustav’s path.
President Bush and his Homeland Security and FEMA heads know they were blamed for every misstep after Katrina, blamed for decades of neglect by state and city government leaders and their failure to upgrade the city’s infrastructure to make it ready for a major hurricane. And Bush was blamed for delays in the arrival of federal aid and relief coordination, even as New Orleans police and rescue departments choked under pressure, unprepared and, perhaps, unconcerned.
That terrible hurricane exactly three years ago this week peeled back layers of largely invisible poverty in New Orleans, revealing thousands of people living in dwellings that would barely have stood up to a routine severe weather event and certainly never had a chance to withstand Katrina’s wrath.
All of the devastation was laid at the feet of the Bush Administration. Bush doesn’t care about the poor people of New Orleans who have lost everything, the thinking went. To rational observers it was so absurd that we were left to wonder if these instant historians suspected Bush of ordering Katrina to the shores of Louisiana and Mississippi.
And now? Obama gets his coronation Thursday night in Denver, but the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign already are in planning mode, playing out scenarios for next week under which the Republican Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul would be impacted by Gustav. If the storm hits as scheduled, would Republicans gathered for their convention hundreds of miles to the north become (unjustly) ridiculed as “insulated, out-of-touch white folk”, partying away while citizens of New Orleans and other impoverished Gulf Coasters are enduring Hurricane Gustav?
And would Team Obama exploit this scenario? Of course. Count on it.
Hurricanes are among nature’s most feared weather events. They are unpredictable and unrelenting. But they can be avoided, and it is not up to the federal government, and certainly not up to the President of the United States, to force citizens to face up to the threat posed by these hurricanes (especially amid predictions of active hurricane seasons for years to come). Let us consider the facts:
- No one is forced to live in coastal regions of the country where hurricanes are most likely to arrive every few years or more.
- No one who stays in his home despite orders to evacuate as a hurricane approaches can complain if he loses everything in a matter of a few hours. Evacuees tends to find themselves uninjured with drinking water, food, clothing and at least one automobile still intact when they obey authorities.
- A lot of New Orleans residents insisted the city would never experience a catastrophic hurricane and, even as Katrina was roaring to life and growing by the minute, refused to budge.
But President Bush and his administration ultimately was blamed for everything that happened thereafter, not the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, or the mayor of New Orleans, or the individuals who chose to ride it out.
The brilliant political columnist Victor Davis Hanson addressed a similar scenario back in February. We didn’t know about Gustav then, but we were already seeing the gathering storm of a weakening economy, mortgage foreclosures and rising energy prices. And the blame game had begun even as the clouds darkened on the horizon.
Obama and other liberals were then seizing the “gloom-and-doom” narrative that said “Americans are doing almost everything right, but still are not living as well as we deserve to be.” Hanson cited examples of the many bad things Obama wants voters to believe should have been stopped by Bush:
- The Home Mortgage Meltdown, which, Hanson writes, “had nothing to do with misguided attempts … to put first-time buyers in homes through zero-down payments, interest-only loans, and subprime but adjustable mortgage rates — as part of liberal efforts to increase home ownership rates.”
- Foreclosures. “There are apparently few Americans who unwisely borrowed against their homes a second and third time …”. Bush made them do it, apparently.
- Fuel and energy price hikes. Bush forced people to own “large gas-guzzlers (for everyday driving) and big homes” even as liberals maintained an aversion to “nuclear power plants, oil drilling off the coasts and in Alaska, and conservation of resources.”
The Obamaniacs preach that American can not afford another four years of Bush-like governance and, next week, with giddiness I am sure, they will denounce a Republican Party that dares to hold a convention as a hurricane approaches.
Who knows what actually will happen. Appearing on Fox News, political observer and campaign guru Dick Morris commented today that, right or wrong, McCain and his inner circle must begin monitoring The Weather Channel around the clock when arriving for the convention in Minneapolis. If there is a hurricane that slams the Gulf coast, Morris said, “McCain needs to get on a plane and go there.”
That may be a valid point. But before he does, I hope Sen. McCain also takes a moment to remind Republicans that the U.S. economy is starting to recover from its own hurricane, that GDP rose to 3.3% in the second quarter, blowing away estimates, and that average national gas prices fell 42 days in a row through Aug. 28.
There is a lot of blame swirling around. Might as well take a little credit, too.
Had they started confronting and taming corrosive labor unions decades ago, Americans today might find Toyotas and BMWs little more than a passing curiosity, just as we did say, in the 1970s, when the odd Alfa Romeo or Renault was spotted amid a sea of Cadillac Sedan de Villes or Lincoln Continentals or Oldsmobile 88s. (C’mon, was there anything sexier on the road around 1970 than a Buick Riviera coupe?)