Waste Deep

Here I will only observe that yesterday, as the scope of the Gulf Coast catastrophe was becoming known, the president was photographed ‘playing’ a guitar.

The comparison with Nero (who was known to play a roman instrument called a ‘fidicula’ - which was really closer to what we would recognize as a guitar; ‘fiddle’ being a poor translation.) is too apt and should be avoided.

However the fact that this utterly image-conscious administration would allow this photo-op to go forward - even assuming it was doing everything it could behind the scenes to coordinate relief - is utterly incomprehensible and can only be factored by considering how unsympathetic, how fundamentally heartless the people presuming to run the government are.

New Orleans is a cradle of American music. For this president to allow himself to be photographed with a guitar, dry and new, while our symbolic center of musical invention is destroyed shows not only a misunderstanding of the conditions on the ground there but also a fatal insensitivity to the invisible causes and forces that have shaped this nation.

For some idea of the natural and economic forces at work here, and what is at stake for the country as a whole, I highly recommend John Barry’s history of the great Mississippi flood of 1927, “Rising Tide”. New Orleans barely avoided catastrophe then; but it was the mismanaged aftermath of the crisis, which lingered for months, that signaled the profound social changes that followed so soon afterwards.

N.O. Exit

As I write the levees protecting New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain have come apart and the city is being flooded, the nightmare which the city has been putting off for 200 years. Clearly the civic authorities have been overwhelmed and an enormous effort needs to be made beginning tonight to rescue people still trapped, restore order, evacuate the city, insure against the spread of disease, provide for the long-term care of the refugees, patch the breaks and begin to make the city habitable again.

Some things worth noting: a free market is not going to do any of the above; private organizations and faith-based initiatives are in as much trouble as the rest of the population. Even for the federal government this will be an undertaking that, at this stage, is of an unimaginable scale. Everyone - everyone - has to pitch in.

It is unfair to blame the president for the protracted failings of imagination that has lead the Army Corps of Engineers to seek to protect New Orleans from flood with a series of engineering projects, each one stronger than the last and every one bound to fail as the scale of moving water increased. If last year’s budget took money away from levee maintenance maybe now it can be put to better use saving lives that would have been at risk tonight anyway.

However, from this day forward, George Bush is going to judged by his response to this disaster, more I think, than he will be in years to come on Iraq.

Iraq, as much of a inexcusable mess as it is, is also - when compared to other conflicts - still on the scale of an expensive adventure. Failure there is far more serious than failure in Vietnam or the prospect of failure in the Philippines after the Spanish War, but for now the casualty costs - on both sides - is a fraction of either conflict.

In a way Katrina has begun a greater crisis than 9/11 with more people affected, a wider site of devastation and incalculable economic costs. There are not a lot of people saying this right now, too many are still in shock while everyone else looks for a sense of scale. But in the next 48 hours, once disease starts, it will be clear. By then unless the United States Government is doing everything in its power to address the catastrophe, the little man in the White House will undergo some “accountability moments” he wasn’t expecting.

And here’s my biased view: He is completely incapable of the task. In five years as president George Bush has not shown any ability to think resoursefully or independent of political calculation, details bother him and he is easily led. Furthermore the task will call for levels of sympathy and compassion for people less fortunate than himself that he cannot begin to feel; not because he is a bad man, only a selfish, little one.

The smartest thing Bush can do tonight is call up Bill Clinton and appoint him Disaster Czar with the rank of Five-Star General to manage the Gulf Coast relief effort. Nothing less can save him from the hiding he will get when his usual methods fail. To me it is a no brainer. Of course, I would have asked Mrs. Sheehan in for some iced tea her second afternoon standing on the hot road outside my estate.