THE REAL PRESIDENT BUSH
Living Too Much in the Bubble?

From Time courtesy of This Modern World:

Just as Katrina exposed the lurking problems of race and poverty, it also revealed the limitations of Bush's rigid, top-down approach to the presidency. "The extremely highly centralized control of the government--the engine of Bush's success--failed him this time," a key adviser said.

And

A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President's increasing isolation. Bush's bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news--or tell him when he's wrong. Bush has never been adroit about this. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. "The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me," the aide recalled about a session during the first term. "Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, 'All right. I understand. Good job.' He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom."

And

Finally, if the Bush team initially missed the significance of a city with a majority of black citizens in peril, it may be because he has organized his presidency around a different segment of the population.

Click here for the rest.

This is nothing new. It's the same kind of blind arrogance and willful ignorance that's been coming out of the White House for five years now. The only difference is that the corporate media aren't playing along the way they used to. Earlier this evening, right before Bush's desperate address to the nation from the Big Easy's Jackson Square, Ted Koppel, according to my wife, ran a montage of White House statements about what was happening in New Orleans during the reign of chaos crosscut with scenes from what was actually happening on the ground; the effect clearly showed the White House's total divorce from reality. It makes me wonder if the President has any idea at all about what's actually going on in Iraq: the New Orleans debacle was played out live on television, piped into millions of American households, which ultimately forced Bush to do his job; Iraq, however, is thousands of miles away, and most US reporters are still "embedded." It's really difficult not to believe that this bubble reality within which Bush lives his life affects his entire Presidency, and, therefore, the entire nation.

One last thing. I threw in that final excerpt about race simply because it states well why I think that racism was a major factor in the White House's slow response to Hurricane Katrina. It's been quite surprising to me that so many white Americans are hesitant to consider the possibility that race played a role: "It's not race; it's class," I've heard people say countless times. Well, class did, indeed, play a role, but it is impossible to deny that poverty and race in America are hopelessly intertwined. Racism did play a role, but it wasn't the kind of Simon Legree, moustache twirling, archetypal racist media image that white Americans typically envision when they consider racism; rather, it was racism by indifference. As Kanye West observed a few days back, "George Bush doesn't care about black people."


Look at me! I'm the President!

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$