Poll: Bush Not Taking Brunt of Katrina Criticism

[Corlyss_D]

Poll: Bush Not Taking Brunt of Katrina Criticism
Hurricane Preparedness Is Faulted; Fewer Blame Bush for Problems
Analysis by GARY LANGER

Sep. 4, 2005 - Americans are broadly critical of government preparedness in the Hurricane Katrina disaster -- but far fewer take George W. Bush personally to task for the problems, and public anger about the response is less widespread than some critics would suggest.

Sampling, data collection and tabulation for this poll were done by TNS.

In an event that clearly has gripped the nation -- 91 percent of Americans are paying close attention -- hopefulness far outweighs discontent about the slow-starting rescue. And as in so many politically charged issues in this country, partisanship holds great sway in views of the president's performance.

The most critical views cross jurisdictions: Two-thirds in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the federal government should have been better prepared to deal with a storm this size, and three-quarters say state and local governments in the affected areas likewise were insufficiently prepared.

Views of Hurricane Response
Yes No
Federal government adequately prepared? 31% 67%
State/local government adequately prepared? 24 75
Blame Bush? 44 55
Other evaluations are divided. Forty-six percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the crisis, while 47 percent disapprove. That compares poorly with Bush's 91 percent approval rating for his performance in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but it's far from the broad discontent expressed by critics of the initial days of the hurricane response. (It also almost exactly matches Bush's overall job approval rating, 45 percent, in an ABC/Post poll a week ago.)

Similarly, 48 percent give a positive rating to the federal government's response overall, compared with 51 percent who rate it negatively -- another split view, not a broadly critical one.

When it gets to specifics, however, most ratings are worse: Majorities ranging from 56 to 79 percent express criticism of federal efforts at delivering food and water, evacuating displaced people, controlling looting and (especially) dealing with the price of gasoline. In just one specific area -- conducting search and rescue operations -- do most, 58 percent, give the government positive marks.

Rating the Government's Handling of...
Positive Negative
Situation overall 48% 51%
Gas prices 20 79
Looting/td> 26 71
Evacuations 38 59
Food, water needs 43 56
Search, rescue 58 39
Partisanship, as noted, plays a huge role: Nearly three-quarters of Republicans approve of the president's performance, and two-thirds rate the government's overall response positively. About seven in 10 Democrats take the opposite view on both scores.

Bush's Response to Katrina
Approve Disapprove
All 46% 47%
Democrats 17 71
Independents 44 48
Republicans 74 22
Most Americans, 55 percent, also say Bush does not deserve a significant level of personal blame for problems in the federal response to the crisis. And while 44 percent do assign him blame, only about half of them, 23 percent overall, blame him "a great deal."

Some of these views seem to take into account the magnitude of the natural disaster: Forty-four percent say the situation shows serious problems in the federal government's emergency preparedness overall, but more, 54 percent, instead say that this particular disaster was a special case. Republicans, in particular, take the latter position.

There's another division on the suggestion that the deployment of National Guard troops and equipment to Iraq made it more difficult for state officials to respond to the hurricane: Forty-six percent think this is so, and fewer, 31 percent, think it had a big impact. Forty-nine percent don't see much impact of the deployment.

There's even division on what to do with New Orleans: Forty-nine percent favor rebuilding the city with a stronger levee system; 43 percent, though, think low-lying areas of the city should be abandoned, with those homes and businesses rebuilt elsewhere. House Speaker Dennis Hastert seemed to make such a suggestion earlier this week, to broad criticism.


Emotion
Emotional responses to the rescue efforts fall short of broad outrage. Forty-five percent of Americans are angry about the federal government's response to the hurricane situation -- plenty of anger, but short of a majority. (Sixty-three percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents express anger; among Republicans it's 27 percent.) Similarly, 44 percent call themselves "ashamed" at the federal response.

Few are proud of the response -- just 27 percent -- but the most prevalent emotion is hopefulness, expressed by 64 percent. (Fifty-five percent say they're "shocked," which could reflect a response to the magnitude of the disaster as much as the federal response.)

Feelings About the Hurricane Response
(Percent "yes" on each item)
All Democrats Independents Republicans
Hopeful 64% 50% 61% 80%
Shocked 55 68 56 42
Angry 45 63 51 27
Ashamed 44 63 46 28
Proud 27 17 21 43


Personal Link
Many people have a personal link to the disaster: Twenty-eight percent -- more than one in four Americans -- say they have close personal friends or relatives in the Gulf Coast area who were directly affected by the hurricane and flooding. Of that group, as of Friday night, about four in 10 were still waiting for word on how those friends or relatives had fared.

People who know someone affected by the hurricane are no more likely to criticize the president's or federal government's performance, and in some specifics (delivering food and water and evacuating displaced people) they rate the federal response more positively than others. Nor are those who have a friend or relative affected more apt to be angry at the federal response.

The data suggest that people still awaiting word on the status of friends or relatives are more apt to be displeased with the federal government's response and people who had already heard are more apt to be pleased, but these subgroups in this sample are too small for reliable analysis.


Gas
As noted, the federal government's worst rating -- 79 percent negative -- is for dealing with the oil supply and the rising price of gasoline -- the issue that impacts most people most personally. The rating is similar to recent views of Bush's handling of gasoline prices; in an ABC/Post poll a week ago, 73 percent disapproved.

One reason for the poor rating is the broad view that the rise in prices is unjustified: In a rare example of bipartisanship, just 16 percent of Americans think higher gas prices can be explained by the drop in oil production caused by the hurricane; 72 percent, instead, think oil companies and gas dealers are taking unfair advantage of the situation. Three-quarters of Democrats and independents think so, and in this case, so do two-thirds of Republicans.

Lower consumption is possible in the weeks ahead, but not mainly for the reason Bush suggested. He called for Americans this week to conserve the nation's fuel supply by buying gas only if they need it. Half of Americans think they'll be driving less in the weeks ahead, but the vast majority of them say it's not conservation that'll be motivating them -- but the price.


Race and Politics
Finally, this poll finds greater criticism of Bush and the federal effort among non-whites than among whites; non-whites, for example, are 23 points more likely to disapprove of Bush's performance, 21 points more apt to think the deployment of National Guard troops in Iraq hindered the hurricane response, and 13 points more likely to rate the federal response negatively. Much of this, however, looks to be associated with political affiliation; non-whites are 23 points more apt than whites to be Democrats.


Methodology
This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by telephone Sept. 2, 2005, among a random national sample of 501 adults. The results have a four-point error margin. Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.

Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

[Ralph]

The focus on Bush, as I said here several days ago, diverts attention from the complexity of the failure to adequately respond to the crisis. There is much blame and many candidates to share in it.

[Ralph]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Who is to blame?
BY DAVE GOLDINER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Monday, September 5th, 2005

The Homeland Security Department was so focused on terrorist attacks that it was woefully unprepared to deal with a crushing natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, experts said.

The sprawling agency was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to take charge of all national emergency efforts, but proved completely ill-suited to the complex job of storm relief.

"Since 9/11 FEMA has been basically dissected and taken apart," said James Lee Witt, who ran the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bill Clinton. "If you don't plan together and train together ... you cannot respond. It needs to be put back as an independent agency."

The Pentagon further hampered the effort by initially resisting using troops to help victims of the killer hurricane, according to a bombshell report in Newsweek. While crucial hours ticked away, Defense Department lawyers fought an intramural battle against allowing the military to be roped into the disaster effort, the mag reports.

"Lawyers fretted over untrained 19-year-olds trying to enforce local laws," a source said.

President Bush could have quickly "federalized" the National Guard and handed over the security aspects of the relief effort to the military - as his father, George H.W. Bush, did during the 1992 Los Angeles race riots.

Critics say Katrina exposed the military as overstretched with tens of thousands of National Guard troops serving in Iraq.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff shrugged off that charge and bristled when, on NBC's "Meet the Press," Tim Russert read several lines from a Daily News editorial that scorched his failings. Chertoff hinted the administration might try to pass blame to local officials for failing to give an accurate picture of the crisis. "One of the things we'll look at is why in the middle of this emerging crisis there was kind of a conflict on the information," he told "Fox News Sunday."

Secretary of State Rice also defended the administration. In a tour of damage in her home state of Alabama, she dismissed talk that the victims were neglected because many are black. "Nobody, especially the President, would have left people unattended on the basis of race," she said. Bush is to head back to the disaster area today.

[Ralph]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Bush at a crossroads
BY THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF
Monday, September 5th, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush suddenly confronts the heaviest lift of his presidency, a perfect political storm made exceedingly more difficult to contain because of his drooping political authority.

Bush's perennially glass-half-full image-meisters contend the national catastrophe spawned by Hurricane Katrina's malevolent fury has handed Bush an unexpected opportunity to rise to the occasion and right his struggling presidency.

"He can demonstrate his ability to lead in a way that wasn't there a week ago," a senior adviser said yesterday, convinced that Bush will appear as strong consoling hurricane victims as he did amid the rubble of the twin towers.

Some Bush stalwarts are less co*cky. "He has been damaged by the perception that we were asleep at the wheel," one prominent Republican official said. "He has to fix that at a time when there isn't a lot else going for him."

"This is the crucible for Bush," he added, "and it can go either way."

That grim reality has clearly sunk in at the White House, which has moved to what one GOP congressional staffer called an "all-hurricane war footing."

Bush dispatched the nominally apolitical secretaries of State (Alabamian Condoleezza Rice) and Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the disaster scene to empathize with victims. Bush himself will visit today, his second war zone tour in three days.

Yesterday Bush dropped by the American Red Cross' disaster operations center for a pep talk. "The world saw this tidal wave of disaster ascend upon the Gulf Coast," he told reporters, "and now they're going to see a tidal wave of compassion."

The stakes for Bush in shepherding the Katrina reclamation effort are enormous, particularly since his political standing has dwindled steadily since being reelected only 10 months ago.

Well before last weekend's tragedy, a majority of Americans had lost faith with his stewardship of the Iraq war, a conflict that has polarized the nation and this fall will breach the 2,000 mark in soldier deaths.

The crown jewel of his second-term agenda, an overhaul of Social Security, is in such hopeless shape that even some of his staunchest Republican allies snicker when asked about its prospects.

Gasoline prices have reached usurious levels - and that was before Katrina disrupted crude oil supplies.

A U.S. economy already strapped by mega-billion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will soon have to absorb the bill for a massive domestic Marshall Plan whose costs in time will likely surpass Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Now, the administration's belated response to the carnage has spawned fears from some loyalists that Bush looks out of touch and defensive.

"This may be like what happened to us," an aide to the first President George Bush worried, "where the people around the President aren't picking up on the angst in the country."

On the brighter side for Bush, the crisis at home has, if nothing else, distracted Americans from the turmoil in Iraq, and probably does not complicate his dreams of altering the ideological balance of the Supreme Court for a generation.

Presidential aides said yesterday Bush remains determined to pick a reliable conservative as his second appointment to the high court, and is confident he retains the political clout to prevail over Democratic senators who prefer a more moderate pick.

[Ralph]

Editorial blasts federal response

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The Times-Picayune of New Orleans printed this editorial in its Sunday edition, criticizing the federal government's response to Hurricane Katrina and calling on every FEMA official to be fired:
An open letter to the President

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we're going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It's accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don't know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city's death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren't they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn't suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn't have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You're doing a heck of a job."

That's unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn't be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.


Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/times. ... index.html

[Ralph]

Bush praised Brown. He also awarded a top medal to George Tenet after his departure in disgrace. As the Irish say: Oy vey!

[Corlyss_D]

There wasn't a Rudi Giulliani among the lot.

I never understood the Tennat medal either. He should have been fired.

[Corlyss_D]

The FEMA director has usually been one of the classic patronage jobs - the place to deposit hard-working unimpressive but harmless twits who helped get the Prez elected. I'm thinking it never will be again. I'm thinkin' there will never be another FEMA director who 1) wasn't a flag officer and 2) understands the little nostrum about logistics in winning battles. Brown should be fired, but probably will be pressured to resign.

[Ralph]

There wasn't a Rudi Giulliani among the lot.

I never understood the Tennat medal either. He should have been fired.

*****

Guiliani was without question a strong and uniting figure after 9/11. But there is zero comparison between what we dealt with here and Katrina. Look at a map of New York. Manhattan below Canal Street was cut off after 9/11, then not that long after that the City Hall area below Chambers Street was restricted. Many thousands were unable to go home - including some of my colleagues - but ALL had alternate housing very fast. Stores, restaurants, theaters - business continued as usual in a surreal setting where every pole and outside wall space was covered with flyers from people seeking loved ones. Indelible memories.

But the huge swath of Katrina has destroyed several cities besides New Orleans and many small towns and villages. The economic ramifications are still beyond calculation. The menace to public health is unprecedented.

So anyone who thinks Guiliani could do anything down there is living a dream. LTG Honore is the right man for New Orleans but the area of devastation is beyond the dynamic leadership of any one person.