So, the Bush administration goes back to the old "buck stops somewhere else" playbook:
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 — Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth dayawaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administrationofficials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at alllevels have called a failure of the country’s emergency management.
And we’ve heard the old ad hominem defense that adminstration critics are just "playing politics".
We are not "playing".
When the government acts or does not act, lives are at stake. In Bush-style politics (father and son), it’s all a game: either you’re winning or you’re losing. It’s a clash of status, not agendas or ideas. The only thing that matters is whether you have the reins of power or not. Where you’re taking the horse hardly matters.
When we direct our outrage at our leaders (and the soft-headed, compliant press corpse), we are saying that ideas matter, that policy matters, that lives are at stake. We believe that politics is not to be "played", but to be lived, and expect at least that much from our leaders. We live our politics for ourselves and our neighbors, because we are affected every day.
Can there be any better proof that the Bush Administration has been playing a game? FEMA director Mike Brown couldn’t run a horse-breeding club. Chertoff tries to run and hide from facts. Bush creates and then abandons a Potemkin-village photo-op stage in NOLA. Then they try to jujitsu the blame off onto the local authorities.
They are not serious, and have never been serious about governing. They think that since government should be small and out of the way, it doesn’t matter what it does do on a day-to-day basis. And hey, most of the time, you probably get lucky, no one notices, the press is bored, no consequences.
I keep thinking back to Robert Siegel’s interview on Thursday with HSA head Michael Chertoff, in which Chertoff denied having heard reports that there were thousands of people in the gravest of danger at the Convention Center. Siegel was not willing to play the phony "on-the-one-side/on-the-other-side" equal treatment game, and forced a clueless Chertoff to recognize the reality of the situation. That act of journalistic persistence may have saved lives in the Convention Center (then again, perhaps not). Siegel’s unwillingness to "play" had life-or-death consequences.
We are not playing. We must not play. In public policy, "winning" and "losing" means life and death. When we call for accountability, we are trying to save lives. President Bush — or any politician or bureaucrat — doesn’t matter as an individual. It’s what he does or doesn’t do that matters. Our criticism must affect action.
