In his post-presidential memoirs, Dwight Eisenhower recounted the day in 1945 on which he saw his first Nazi extermination camp. Never accused of being a brilliant man, even by his supporters, Ike was nevertheless eerily prescient:
(When) I saw my first horror camp…I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda". Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through with the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton's headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and the British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.
Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Douglas MacArthur he elaborated:
The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they (sic) were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to "propaganda."
In case the credibility of his own testimony was called into question, the General ordered thousands of photographs and films to be made. Additionally, he forced ordinary German citizens to parade through the camps to look at the corpses. It appears that he understood with unusual clarity that the Holocaust would eventually be questioned by members of future generations who either sympathized with its goals or those who simply could not believe that such outlandish tales of cruelty could be true.
Like everything else, the gap between events and unscrupulous efforts to historically revise them has been shrunk by technology. Now that the news cycle is measured in minutes rather than days or weeks, current events become history faster than ever before. And despite the mountains of documentation of how events play out in the modern era, the efforts to re-write history are as enthusiastic enough to win the admiration of the most fervent Holocaust denier.
The latest GOP talking point (as evidenced by Mike "Baghdad is like a summer market in Indiana!" Pence, Dick Morris, and Jim "Holy balls am I retarded" Inhofe) regarding the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is that it is "Obama's Katrina" or, as Inhofe eloquently states like the troglodyte he is, this is far worse than the Federal response to Katrina. I find this fascinating for several reasons.
First, in the present tense this disaster illustrates quite a challenge for the Republicans in Washington. They are torn between two contradictory political needs: the need to blame everything that happens on Obama and the need to fellate the oil industry enthusiastically at every opportunity. Their attacks are more confusing than effective. Is this the greatest ecological disaster since the dawn of time or is much ado about nothing, an effort by Greenpeace and other imaginary 1960s caricatures to slander their hated oil villains? So it's fun watching the Pences and Inhofes of the world pinball back and forth between those objectives.
Second, and more to the point of today's post, the conservative effort to exonerate Bush on Katrina is only going to get louder in the coming years. I've argued, and the data clearly underscore this point, that Katrina, not Iraq, ended Bush. His approval rating plummeted below 40 for the first time immediately after Katrina – and it remained in the 30s (and even 20s) for the next three-plus years. So there is clearly a need to re-imagine Katrina if Bush is to be redeemed. Why wait 30 or 40 years to start accusing the media and The Liberals of making up all of the destruction, ineptitude, and human suffering? Let's get that ball rolling now.
The great unanswered question with Obama and the oil spill is what exactly these armchair quarterbacks would like to see the president to do. Any and all technological remedies available are being tried or have been tried. The problem here is that nobody knows how to stop the goddamn thing. Not being a deep-sea geologist, I hardly see what the President has to contribute to solving the problem. In the long-term the Federal government will have a role to play, compensating people whose livelihoods have been ruined, cleaning up the oil slicks, and so on. But just as George Bush could not stop the hurricane, Obama can't stop an oil spill. The difference, however, is that Bush could have helped matters with an immediate and concerted response. There simply isn't a lot for Obama to do at the moment. What he did do that was useful – arm twisting BP into ponying up to pay for the mess – brought howls of condemnation from the right. It was a "shakedown" or "extortion."
In reality, the only way to make this "Obama's Katrina" is to radically redefine Katrina. Most people don't realize that Bush's last press conference as President – this is 2009, four full years after the storm – was about his response to Katrina. He persuaded no one, of course, as outgoing Presidents with 20% approval ratings tend to be unpersuasive. So clearly the job of revising his response to the hurricane will have to be done by others. The public has the attention span of a fruit fly, and it won't be long before they'll be receptive to tales about how Bush leaped into action after a storm that really wasn't that bad anyway (despite, of course, the fact that we can watch all of the disaster unfold on YouTube and in well-researched narratives). The only question is who will write the first book exonerating Bush of the biggest disaster of his presidency. Maybe Ann Coulter will attempt a redux of her embarrassing effort to re-imagine Joe McCarthy. One thing is for certain, though. The oil spill can't be made any worse than it already is, so to make it the "worst" leaves only one course of action: making Katrina, and by extension Bush, a figment of the hysterical liberal media's fertile imagination and twisted agenda.
Kevin says:
It's interesting after Katrina that the countries which made the largest donations to the relief were oil-rich Middle Eastern countries like Kuwait and the UAE.
J. Dryden says:
It seems to me that comparing Bush:Katrina to Obama:Oilspill is one of practicality–to wit, what could/can either man achieve within the limits of power and technology? Obama appears to be fucked for the moment in the sense that until some engineering genius can figure out a practical way to shut the goddamned thing off, there's really nothing he can do. Only *after* the leak is stopped–hey, private industry, weren't you guys supposed to do *everything* better than the government?–time to step up!–can he address the problem. Since he's not an engineer himself, all he can do is the same as the rest of us: scream at the supposedly smart people to fix it. Once someone does that, *then* we can see how the comparison shapes up.
Because it's in the long haul that the character of a leader is shown. Moments of crisis and the ability to rise to them are swell, but it's only what they do *afterwards* and *at length* which show what leaders are made of. FDR gave a great speech in the wake of Pearl Harbor, but it's his (in my opinion) masterful conduct of the subsequent war that best exemplifies his character.
On this basis, Bush has no character. He had no long haul for anything, save the clusterfuck in Afghan–er, Iraq. And even there, man did he get bored fast, and suggested that we should as well. As for New Orleans, when you compare what could have been done to what *was* done, well–Jesus, we haven't had such a pitifully cruel "let's ignore it and hope it fixes itself" response to a crisis since Reagan and the refusal to acknowledge, much less spend a dime on AIDS (still my favorite legacy of the Gipper.)
I spent some time in New Orleans about a year after Katrina–I was interviewing for a job, and so had a lot of one-on-one time with people, young (students) and old (professors), black (students) and white (professors), and much of our talks were devoted to "what's it like to live here." Oh my, the things I heard. The level of anger in every single person I spoke to was rather frightening–the degree to which the people of the city felt utterly betrayed by their government and especially by the president who made promises and kept none of them. (They had few kind words for the ACOE, as well.)
Tea partiers and, before them, yippies, and before them, whoever, like to bitch about how the government is screwing them. They should be forced to live in places like New Orleans, to learn the precise meaning of the term. For now, I say it's too soon to even think about Obama's failure or success. The crisis hasn't passed yet.
And at least when it does, he's got one hell of an object lesson to avoid repeating.
daphne says:
I'm wondering if Coulter's or whoever's book won't argue that Katrina was a huge big deal – dwarfing a nothing of an oil spill comparatively – AND that Bush still handled it much better than Obama vis a vis the latter. That would be a double whammy.
ZenPoseur says:
I can assure you that the Katrina flank of the Bush rehabilitation is going quite well. I've noticed the "Blame Blanco" meme taking hold in plenty of people who really ought to know better, even out here in the commie bastion of San Francisco / Silicon Valley.
Mind you, I'm not exactly in Blanco's fan club, myself. But blaming her for Katrina is like blaming Longstreet for Gettysburg.
HoosierPoli says:
A thought occurred to me recently and I was embarrassed that it was so long in the coming: this weak job growth we've been seeing in recent months, totally out of step with other indicators, has GOT to be related to the massive economic consequences of the oil spill. Hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost or laid off, and the dominos are still falling. When the end comes BP will be thanking their lucky stars that they only had to pay out 20 billion.
Bugboy says:
@HoosierPoli: Yes, I've been suspecting all along, just like it was with Enron, it was all about minimizing liability, ie. losses. I was actually expecting BP to be taken apart like Enron and their accounting firm was, to vanish into the wind before the courts could get ahold of them…but I guess BP is "too big to bail". LOL.
yamy says:
The oil spill can't be made any worse than it already is,
Wrong.
But, Bush may be somewhat prescient: "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead."
Elder Futhark says:
Alright, I'll play. Since Rove was the one who first brought it up in that shitcan rag WSJ, it's appropriate that he get the icepick to the forehead each time the word "Katrina" is used. Not hard, mind you. Enough to make a mark and hurt a lot, but not break the skin. I can easily craft a sound-activated robot for the job, pretty much in my sleep.
1) They wish to tar Obama with the self-same brush they desparately need to clean up. Since irony is a commodity as common as household dust , it si hardly woth the efort to point that out. But basically Rove admits that his boss is an incompetent fuckup, and he is, in turn, an incompetent fuckhead for sticking with him.
2) As we all know, the situations are exactly the same, calling for exactly the same response, since:
a) Hey, it's Oil-spill season! Happens every time about the same time year after year, right? Just like hurricanes!
b) Everybody who knows anything about the government knows that the Navy or FEMA or some agency has a department for Plugging Big Fucking Holes in the Bottom of the Sea. Just get the right-sized cork and plug the sucker, what's the big deal? It's not like its Nigeria.
3) As Sarah pointed out with ironclad logic, it's all the lefty enviro whackos fault anyway, and BP is, at most, an innocent bystander that just happenede to be standing there (or)
4) Since Obama caused the recession, why not the oil spill? Is there nothing this Despicable Negro is incapable of? Where is a superhero, preferably extremely pale and rich, when you need him.
5 &c, &c with all that bullshit. Nothing an ice pick to the forehead wouldn't cure.
Elder Futhark says:
Oh, and yamy and like ilk, settle the fuck down with your grisly corpse-licking and wait patiently for the end of the world like the rest of us. Beating off to morbid fantasies will not hasten it.
doug says:
old Ike was smarter than given credit, not sure why no credit…
Elder, thanks. you are on a roll….
yam says:
Not saying I believe it as there isn't a whole lot of evidence shown in that article to back up their eschatological comments. I'm just waitin' for them folks to get all Raptured up so's I can have their stuff…
sanjoaquin says:
Oh, no, they're taking it with them….guess you weren't on the memo list…
yam says:
Jesus only told me to stay home and clean the guns…
Crazy for Urban Planning says:
What it speaks to though is the fact that these Republican jerks aren't going to offer one iota of compromise on anything Obama proposes. I wish he would stop with this bi-partisan talk (I think he really believes that if his intent is good they will work with him).
HoosierPoli says:
As much as I may be labeled as such here, I'm not into the "Eleventh-dimensional chess" defense, but I think that Obama has to know that if he doesn't at least PLAY the bipartisanship game he's opening up a very tender flank. The guy isn't an idiot, and the people around him aren't all idiots.
Salazar, yeah, he's an idiot. But the people that matter aren't.
Parrotlover77 says:
Dear Ed,
WORD.
Sincerely,
Parrotlover77
Sour Kraut says:
old Ike was smarter than given credit, not sure why no credit
Sour Kraut says:
old Ike was smarter than given credit, not sure why no credit
Sour Kraut says:
aliens ate my comment…
Might have been the prescient speech he gave about the military-industrial complex, which would get him run out of today's GOP in a New York picosecond.
Mayya says:
The aftermath of Katrina is the first time I ever found "blogging" to be useful and not mere entertainment. I followed the blog of a man who was in New Orleans where he worked for an IT company with many servers which they kept running during the entirety. He and his co-workers were living in the office building, conducting regular patrols (obviously some military background) and posting reports and photos about what they saw. I wish very much I could remember his name or the company; I'm sure the blog is long gone. It's the same concept as Project Gutenberg: If enough people have access to this information, it cannot be wiped out by those with power.
I know this comment isn't a brilliant remark, but I'm hoping someone will remember the blog I'm talking about.
Bryan says:
Mayya – I remember that, too. It was some quasi-Randroid, I think the blog may even have been hosted on mises.org… but after some quick searching, apparently not. I do recall that that was where I first heard of them, but that’s all I got.