Floods Scour the Political Landscape, Too
By Tina Brown
Thursday, September 8, 2005; C01
Even though it is so familiar in our imaginations, it is still a wonderful
moment in the upcoming Discovery documentary "The Flight That Fought Back"
when the doomed passengers on Flight 93 seize the food cart and race it down
the aisle toward the cockpit like a battering ram, united in courage and
rage. At the preview of the movie at the Bryant Park Hotel in Manhattan you
could feel the exhalation of tension in the audience during the reenactment:
the wish-fulfillment, the satisfaction at the virility of the gesture.
New York may have superficially recovered since 9/11, but the Bush victory in
the election last year left a hangover of self-doubt that drained the city's
mojo. Katrina's perfect meteorological and political storm has at least blown
away that mood. New York's sullen sense of carrying around a deviant secret
-- that President Bush is an empty flight suit -- has gone with the wind.
If 9/11 was Bush's Woodstock, Katrina is his Altamont -- the place where his
ability to unite people behind a flurry of flag-waving came to look like the
hollow sham it always was. John Edwards's mantra of Two Americas doesn't
sound so corny now that Bush's soaring vision of democracy on the march has
suddenly been laid as bare as an abandoned Superdome where the toilets are
overflowing.
But for New Yorkers, the dimensions of the pain mean there is not much glee
in saying "I told you so." Ever since 9/11 we've been endlessly stiffed on
"homeland security." Millions for red Montana, nickels for blue New York.
We had to grit our teeth and host the cynical hijacking of 9/11 by the
Republican convention last year, where even Rudy Giuliani franchised his (and
our) authentic moment of heroism to the Bush reelection machine.
The twin towers are still a gaping hole in the ground fought over by greedy
real estate agents, prima donna architects and culture warriors distractedly
arbitrated by a Republican governor preoccupied with national political
ambitions. The current plans for a third-rate office building on top of a
bunker with a censored museum seems like a strange advertisement for freedom.
But perhaps it suits the city's mood of lingering disappointment after 9/11's
squandered goodwill. Osama bin Laden's outrage goes unavenged while we
continue to suck wind in Baghdad.
But now, in Katrina's aftermath, there's something different in the air: the
scent of insurrection. The needless torment of New Orleans has reignited the
dormant passions of the election. E-mails are flying again between friends
who've been out of touch for months, enclosing Web links to new polemics of
disgust. The big donors with wallet fatigue after John Kerry's loss are ready
to write checks again, big time, for any Democrat who shows courage.
It's as if the tragedy in the Gulf Coast has awakened us from a deep
materialistic sleep to acknowledge the pain of poverty and racial inequality
for the first time in years. Those Democrats who still temporize for fear of
being tagged as "playing politics" don't seem to understand that being all
kissyface and timid is as over as strategy as it is as substance. Better to
play politics than play possum. Maybe Hillary should stop going on
fact-finding trips to Alaska with her new Republican pals. Even before
Katrina changed the landscape, her careful tactics of sleeping with the enemy
had begun to annoy the town that adored her.
Out, damned euphemism! We are in a blazing moment of truth-telling that is
holding the nation rapt before its TV screens. Two days after CNN's Anderson
Cooper bawled out Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana for her and other
politicians' "thanking each other" on the fabulous job they were all doing --
even as he'd just seen rats gnawing at a woman's body in the water behind him
-- we saw the real Landrieu on ABC's "This Week."
Red-eyed and combative, she gave George Stephanopoulos an air tour of
devastation and talked about the New Orleans sheriffs gripping handcuffs in
their teeth as they swam to secure prisoners who would have terrorized the
town further if allowed to escape. "If one person criticizes them or says one
more thing," she told Stephanopoulos, "including the president of the United
States . . . I might have to punch him literally."
Way to go, Mary! This is what America needs. The media-political axis has
enabled a culture of talking points and spin to the point that harsh reality
had nearly vanished from the national conversation. It's an index of the
president's disconnect that last week he could utter the words "Brownie,
you're doing a heck of a job!" to FEMA Director Michael Brown. Or that he
imagined he could actually suggest the administration should investigate the
scandal itself. (And drag its feet on its conclusions until after the next
election. We know the score now.)
In yesterday's New York Post, Dick Morris wrote that W's reputation will
surely recover because rebuilding New Orleans can now become a rallying
theme, a "new source of popularity. . . . A disaster like Katrina is just
what a president needs to anchor his second term." The cynicism is
breathtaking but also shrewd.
What's so troubling about Bush is not that he is incompetent, as many
currently charge. It's that he is dismissive, unless programmed to be
otherwise. His competence, as Justin Franks pointed out in "Bush on the
Couch," extends only to personal self-preservation -- to winning. When the
less fortunate are endangered, he reverts to the primal aphasia he learned at
his mother's knee. "Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," Barbara
Bush commented from Houston on NPR Monday evening, adding, with a chilling
matriarchal chuckle, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know,
were underprivileged anyway. This is working very well for them."
Wow. How's that for one family's values? New York's only consolation this
9/11 is that we no longer feel so marginal as we recoil.
2005Tina Brown
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