Quote: First Amongst Daves said: The four Bush-bashing issues as I understand them are:
1. the initial help went to whites. Bush clearly isn't responsible for that.
2. the help overall was too slow. I think Bush has to take some blame for that, and appears to have done so in his apology, but he's hardly unique - the Japanese reponse to the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe in 1995 (date?) was equally lamentable. Sometimes governments seemed to underestimate the severity of natural disasters.
3. Bush flew in for a few hours, said a few words in front of cameras, then flew out by helicopter to the comfort of the White House. Bad PR by his handlers. The man should have stayed for a few days to share the pain.
4. the anti-flooding system which might have saved N.O. was underfunded by Federal agencies, as part of a general cutback because of a) the deficit caused by tax cuts and/or b) the drain on federal government resources caused by the occupation of Iraq. I have insufficient information on that issue, and suspect the reality is too complex to be reduced to such a summary.
Basically. People aren't blaming Bush for the hurricane. That's just spin. People are blaming Bush for how he chose to allocate federal funds before the hurricane (as a country we didn't have a lot of money set aside for something like this) and his actions and apparent lack of great concern after.
