Bush struggles to find the right tone on disaster

Retake
Even Monday’s trip to the region was a redo, hurriedly arranged by the White House over the weekend after lukewarm response to Bush’s first in-person visit to the Gulf Coast last Friday.

Bush had raised eyebrows on his first trip by, among other things, picking Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss. — instead of the thousands of mostly poor and black storm victims — as an example of loss. “Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch,” Bush said with a laugh from an airplane hangar in Mobile, Ala.

In the same remarks, Bush gave FEMA chief Brown — the face for many of the inadequate federal response — a hearty endorsement. “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job,” Bush said.

Later in Biloxi, Miss., Bush tried to comfort two stunned women wandering their neighborhood clutching Hefty bags, looking in vain for something to salvage from the rubble of their home. He kept insisting they could find help at a Salvation Army center down the street, even after another bystander had informed him it had been destroyed.

And at his last stop that day, at the airport outside of New Orleans, Bush lauded the increasingly desperate city as a great town because he used go there and “enjoy myself — occasionally too much.”

Perception problem
Unlike his galvanizing appearance in the rubble of the World Trade Center just days after the 2001 attacks, Bush has stayed far from the epicenter of New Orleans’ suffering. His only foray into the city was to its edges to watch crews plugging one of the breached levees on Friday.

On Monday, he skipped the hardest-hit coastal areas entirely, choosing instead to visit Baton Rouge — a town about 80 miles northwest of New Orleans that sustained no damage. He also went to Poplarville, Miss., to walk the streets of a middle-class neighborhood that seemed to suffer little more than snapped trees, a couple of off-kilter carport roofs and a downed power line or two.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president avoided New Orleans to stay out of the way of search-and-rescue operations.

“It’s going to be almost impossible to overcome the perception about the president that he didn’t show compassion and didn’t get control of the policy failures,” American University political scientist James Thurber said. “The vivid images that are coming across the television are really destroying his image as a leader.”

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said the president and his aides are unconcerned for now about the unrelenting criticism.

“Emotions are running high. People are tired,” Bartlett said. “If we focused more of our attention on decisions that have already been made, rather than on those before us, there’s potential for making far greater mistakes. ... We really don’t have time to play the political game right now.”

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