The sins of the father...

are revisited upon the son?

Somerby is right, I guess, we progressives are so busy bashing Bush II's response to Katrina, that we've failed to notice that his father was just as inept at dealing with domestic disasters.

PART 1: IN SEARCH OF SOME FACTS: Because we're part of the alleged "reality-based community," we decided we'd actually check! We'd heard anguished liberals complain about FEMA's slow response to Katrina. But how fast have federal agencies responded in prior hurricanes? What are the actual facts about this? We took a cursory look at the facts. And what we found seemed bad for presidents named Bush -- and good for a president named Clinton.

First, a return to Bush 41. This past Sunday night, NBC re-aired a three-year old Dateline about 1992's Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm. "It still stands as the costliest natural disaster ever in this country," host Stone Phillips said in his introduction. "Hurricane Andrew slammed into Southern Florida 13 years ago this week, leaving behind more than $30 million in damage, 100,000 people homeless, and more than a dozen dead." With numbers like those, Hurricane Andrew was a pimple compared to Katrina. ("Andrew was an extremely small hurricane, physically, extraordinarily intense, very much like a strong tornado over about a 25-mile to 30-mile swath," one expert says in the Dateline report.) Andrew flattened large parts of Florida south of Miami. But how did Bush's 41's [sic] FEMA respond? Parts of Dennis Murphy's Dateline report sounded familiar by last Sunday, when the program re-aired:

MURPHY (8/23/02): Perhaps most surprisingly, in the first three days after Andrew, there was little outside help coming into South Florida, no federal cavalry riding over the hill. Local governments and charities were scrambling to do what they could.

UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: (videotape) No pushing, no shoving, please!

MURPHY: Food and drug stores gave necessities away, but the effort was overwhelmed by the sheer number of needy...TV weatherman Bryan Norcross says that because the heart of Miami had dodged the bullet, federal emergency officials seemed to think all of the communities to the south of the city had dodged Andrew as well.

Huh! For three days after Hurricane Andrew, the "federal cavalry" didn't appear. Murphy described extensive looting of private homes as south Floridians fought for their lives. On Day 4, the feds finally showed:

MURPHY: In those first days after Hurricane Andrew, South Florida itself was fighting for survival. But on Day 4, August 28th, outside help finally arrived: federal troops. Twenty thousand National Guard, Army and Marine Corps troops poured into South Florida. They restored order, set up field kitchens to feed the hungry, built tent cities to house the homeless, and helicoptered supplies to victims in remote areas. They also helped bring back a feeling among the people here that had been missing for days: a sense of hope. South Florida was taking its first steps back.

The feds didn't show until Day 4 in this, a much smaller storm than Katrina. In fairness, if this were the only precedent, the federal response to Katrina wouldn't seem all that unusual.

But this isn't the only precedent. In 1995 and 1996, the U.S. was hit by an unusual number of storms. As we reviewed USA Today's coverage, we began to notice differences with the Katrina experience. In July 1996, Steve Marshall described preparations for Hurricane Bertha:

MARSHALL (7/11/96): A s Hurricane Bertha churned toward the Southeast coast Wednesday, a massive exodus of tourist havens began.

Officials urged at least 1 million people to leave as Bertha took aim with 100-mph winds.

An estimated 500,000 people were ordered to evacuate six north Florida counties. About 50,000 were asked to get off Hatteras and Ocracoke islands on North Carolina's Outer Banks. And officials urged the evacuation of parts of two South Carolina counties with 380,000 residents...

Bertha's immediate effects:

-- NASA moved the shuttle Atlantis off its Cape Canaveral launch pad to a hangar.

-- Olympic officials in Georgia moved yachts inland.

-- Navy officials ordered 54 ships out to sea to avoid being battered against the docks.

-- President Clinton canceled appearances set for today in Orlando and Tampa.

Witt was upbeat about his agency's plans for the storm. "Everyoneis ready and on alert," he said. "I think as far as our planning efforts, we're in good shape. We have a lot of resources available."

Hurricane Bertha was no Katrina. But President Clinton "canceled appearances" as Bertha approached the U.S. mainland, and James Lee Witt boasted of FEMA's preparation. In the aftermath of 1999's Hurricane Floyd, we noticed a similar theme in Lawrence McQuillan's reporting:

MCQUILLAN (9/20/99): President Clinton, who has picked up the moniker "comforter in chief," visits North Carolina today to meet with victims of Hurricane Floyd and confer with state and local officials to coordinate federal relief efforts.

Clinton will go to Raleigh and then take a helicopter to Tarboro, where torrential rains created massive flooding. "We are on the threshold of a crisis," Edgecombe County Manager Joe Durham said...

In fact, Clinton was unwilling to be away from Washington when the storm struck the East Coast last week. He called off plans to golf in Hawaii after a five-day trip to New Zealand and returned to the nation's capital.

Aides say Clinton's 12 years as governor of Arkansas made him particularly sensitive to the need for swift federal action to help communities cope with natural disasters, and to the political benefits derived from meeting the needs of victims.

Clinton took the highly unusual step of issuing disaster declarations for North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida even before the hurricane's high winds and rains hit the states.

No, Hurricane Floyd was no Katrina. But like Bush 43 in the case of Katrina, Clinton made disaster declarations even before the hurricane hit. And oh yes, he did something else: He cancelled pleasing vacation plans so he could be at his desk when the hurricane hit. Last week, of course, Bush 43 still lounged in Crawford as Katrina bore down on the U.S. coast; on Day 2, he flew off to make a speech in San Diego even after New Orleans' levees had breached. (The levees gave way on Monday; Bush flew to San Diego on Tuesday.) No, our cursory review doesn't make us experts in federal reaction time. But we thought we saw a difference in the way these presidents acted. And we thought it would serve the interests of liberals and Dems if facts like these were developed.

But alas! We learned a sad fact from Katrina last week. Despite all the excited talk about the way we're "reality based," our liberal elites are increasingly vacuous -- empty, stupid, dim and shrill, committed to loud, self-satisfied ranting and too inept -- too self-involved -- to traffic in trivial things like facts. What are the facts about last week's reaction? Was FEMA's reaction historically slow? We would guess that review of these facts would tend to promote progressive interests. But we've yet to see any real attempt to review past federal reaction to storms. Loud-mouthed liberals are calling folk names, something we simply love to do (it feels very good). But the facts are hard to find, about this and many other topics.

Yeah, I'm ashamed. I've been so busy calling W names, I've missed a chance to bask in nostalgic glow of remembering what a complete fuck up his dad was as president as well. Damn. My bad.