Ex-aides say Bush never recovered from Katrina

Source: Yahoo

WASHINGTON – Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."

Their comments are a part of an oral history of the Bush White House that Vanity Fair magazine compiled for its February issue, which hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationally on Jan. 6. Vanity Fair published comments by current and former government officials, foreign ministers, campaign strategists and numerous others on topics that included Iraq, the anthrax attacks, the economy and immigration.

Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, said that as a new president, Bush was like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee whom critics said lacked knowledge about foreign affairs. When Bush first came into office, he was surrounded by experienced advisers like Vice President Dick Cheney and Powell, who Wilkerson said ended up playing damage control for the president.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_advisers_speak_out

"Wilkerson said, adding that he considered Cheney probably the "most astute, bureaucratic entrepreneur" he'd ever met.He became vice president well before George Bush picked him," Wilkerson said of Cheney. "And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush — personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum.""

Yes, bush is more than vacant. He's an actual vacuum. Unfortunately so are most of his followers.

only the Americans deaths that Bush are responsible for matter. Maybe it is time for us to awaken to the fact that we are all related.

I've got a lot more sympathy for them.

Do we still have time to impeach?

theoretically, yes

Congress convenes on Jan 3, 2009, but will not meet until Jan 9, 2009. As of jan 9, 2009 - there will be 11 days remaining in the bush misadministration - plenty of time for the house to vote to impeach and the senate to convict.

will it happen? doubt it, unless they hand out balls with the "Welcome Back" gift bags.

fuck'em! I have no sympathy for GWB or his families reputation. He wasn't just manipulated, he enjoyed other peoples suffering. He was the absolute worst president we have ever had, and we'd better learn from it or this will happen again.

Covering up the Statue of Justice was a hoot! Spying on millions of innocents was quite a giggle. The passive genocide in the faked Iraq war was also a great opportunity to cash in on pure hell on Earth too! What a great fascist country full of gay-hating bigots and criminals.

Great job, Bushie!

Oh wait, it can't. You maggots in the White House sucked this country dry. Good riddance! Less than 22 days and we get our country back.

Someday we'll thank him you'll see :sarcasm:

If you have a corporate-military who hand picked a no-heart VP you get theft death destruction and cunning schemes to make poor and make rich and take away rights of the poor to give all rights to the rich.

I don't believe Wilkerson. I believe that Cheney was chosen and they tried to figure out who would be the best figurehead puppet fund raiser and signature writer who they could direct and who would do what they told him to do and say, to the best of his liminted ability.

Both failed the country.

Both conspired with the corporate military barons reverends mafia wall street and fired all their weapons against us and innocent world citizens.

Who think .."nails?" "What nails?"

The country, the world, got to see how bad he was. How clueless. How uncaring. He lost a lot of people's support over Katrina, as well he should have.

propaganda machine could use to enrage the base for the next few elections.

that was the kind of decision rove would know bush would take pleasure in being part of. maybe he was disappointed it didn't work out as planned.

1. While New Orleans is drowning, Bush gets up on a stage and plays guitar.



2. People are still continuing to drown, and Bush gets together with John Mc Cain to celebrate his birthday party. They share cake on the tarmac.



3. Now Bush realizes it's serious. He gets into Air Force One, flies over the devastation. This has an even worse effect for Bush.



4. Lots of people drowned.


5. Bush is sad, realizes he's toast. Tries to save himself, but it doesn't work.

He never recovered! I hope he found a new home and a new job also I hope he didn't miss the dead family members killed in the storm too much.

Oh wait, they mean he was blamed for his own fuckup. That's less sad.

If he had not made that choice, Katrina would be have less consequential to many.

Terry Schiavo was the bitter end. By the time that clusterfuck, created for personal gain, the totality of the utter fuckedupedness of the repukes was rendered in such stark relief that the most die-hard repuke supporters were left unable to struggle through the logical gyrations necessary to keep on keepin' on.

If they had spent even half the effort on Katrina that they did on Schiavo, they might still be in power.

But as always, after Hubris come Nemesis.

New Orleans never recovered from Katrina

I think there are a few new orlean folk who might not sympathize

My contempt for that man and his mouthpieces knows no bounds

that lost Republicans their credibility with the public.

They are re-writing history so they can eventually eliminate SS using their April 2004 banking problem creation.

First, spot the lower-case "ap" buried in the url. AP = Associated Pukes. Notorious corpo/fascist disinformation 'news' monopoly.

Primary source, Vanity Fair. Don't know what their purpose may be. Sometimes good, in-depth articles. Would have to read the whole thing to know if/how the Associated Pukes have spun it. Could be this AP article is a P.R. pre-emptive strike to deflect impact or put a certain spin on peoples' understanding of the VF article.

In any case, the Associated Pukes (not Yahoo, not VF) wrote this article, and the disinformation starts in the first half of the first sentence of the article: "(Hurricane Katrina) knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush...".

What "bully pulpit"? Bush's approval rating had 'fallen' to 49% on the very day of his 2nd inauguration, in Jan '05, an unprecedented low for a supposedly 're-elected,' 2nd term president, and began sinking like the Titanic thereafter. I'm not sure what it was just before Katrina (by summer of that year), but it was well on its way to the wildly unpopular 20% of today (somewhere in the mid-30s, I believe). Bush had long since lost any "bully pulpit" he may have had. Most Americans considered him a lying shit-head by the time of Katrina.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point...The president broke his bond with the public." --Matthew Dowd, as quoted by the Associated Pukes, presumably accurately but possibly out of context, from the VF article.

What "bond" with the public? I don't think Bush ever had any "bully pulpit" or "bond with the public" except for a very narrow period of time, just after 9/11. In Feb '03, just before the invasion of Iraq, nearly 60% of the American people opposed that war (all polls). In May '04, 63% of the American people opposed torture "under any circumstances" (NYT poll). In fact, throughout that period--2003-2005--polls show the American people in huge opposition to virtually every Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 90% range (90% on the deficit and privatizing Soc Security). He was already perceived as a liar, as unamerican (on issues such as pre-emptive war and torture), in some respects as an idiot and a puppet, and as out of step with most Americans' views, and as having only bully power--not a "bully pulpit" (moral power)--to impose fascist policy upon us--long before Katrina. In fact, the opinion polls of that period, showing overwhelming disagreement between the American people and Bush on nearly every policy, is one of the supporting arguments (inferential evidence) of a stolen election in 2004.

Dan Bartlett, as quoted here by the Associated Pukes, in para. 3, is more correct than Matthew Dowd: "Politically, (Katrina) was the final nail in the coffin." (emphasis added)

I'm only to para. 3, and I'm already smelling the disinformation spin that AP is trying to achieve (--don't know if it's true of the original VF article): That is wasn't THE WAR that turned the American people against Bush. War is okay. War is good. War is very profitable. If only Bush had handled Katrina better, THE WAR would be forgotten and forgiven.

The intention of disinformation probably originates with the Pukes who are being quoted, and is here promulgated by AP (and maybe by VF). They want you to think that it was Katrina, not THE WAR, that has made Bush such a hated figure today. They all love war. They all promoted war. Promoting war was their job. It was that Brownie dude who fucked it all up. And I would have to read to the end of the AP article, and read the VF article, to know if any other view--outside the disinformation bubble of the Bushwhacks--is even mentioned (in either one). (Do they let these bloviaters, liars and war profiteers say all this crap without opposition?) But I would say that I've probably nailed it (it wasn't THE WAR, it was Katrina), on the first 3 AP paragraphs of this AP article. No prizes for winning this contest. Just help in reading between the lines of future AP bullshit.

---------------

(I do think there was a bloodbath going on in the White House, way in the deep background behind Katrina, having to do with Fitzgerald's lawsuit against Libby, and Bush/Rove's vs. Cheney/Libby's culpability in outing Plame. I think the White House split on that issue, and Rove went on strike for a period of time, as a result. That is why Bush Jr. seemed to have no P.R. help--was abandoned out there all on his own--during Katrina, and possibly why Daddy Bush and Bill Clinton came to his rescue. Rove was AWOL during Katrina (and later put out a story that he was in the hospital). Cheney was distinctly unhelpful during Katrina. All he did was issue an order to emergency workers, who were working through the night to restore power to the hospitals, to divert their work to restoring power to the east coast oil pipeline. A VERY divided White House, seemingly incapable of putting any positive spin on the disaster, even with a collusive, lapdog, corpo/fascist press. It's possible that this "oral history" article in VF, echoed by AP, is designed--maybe not by the original authors--I don't know--but by the Bushwhacks being quoted--to obscure the darker goings on, during that period. I date the beginning of the end of the Bush Junta to Katrina, but not because of Katrina itself; rather because of events within our "secret government" behind the scenes, during Katrina, that possibly began when the CIA's Tenet tossed the Plame hand grenade to the AG/DoJ, and ended in Nov. 06, with Pelosi's "impeachment is off the table" and Rumsfeld's resignation. The danger was a Cheney putsch, behind the scenes during Katrina. It was headed off by means of a bargain: no impeachment, and Cheney (the actual president) will leave quietly when the time comes (and Rumsfeld had to go). An ignoble deal, to be sure. But maybe it was all that the 'white hats' could accomplish, short of, oh, restoring democracy in the U.S.)

I agree with your analysis. Bush's loss of popularity was always a constant. As a matter of fact, the whole issue of his so-called popularity is a myth. From the beginning the media have ignored the one lie that makes all subsequent action based on that lie just a slow coup and a crime spree. When the Supreme Justices selected Bush it gave legitimacy to the Shadow government's illegal actions from that moment on. So the 'bully pulpit' was always illegitimate in the first place. Everything that's been said by the media which has chosen to ignore the fundamental original lie is flawed by dint of the original myth. The history of the last 8 years has been an exercise in creeping fascism and how to break the laws of this country and the world by systematically dismantling the checks and balances through deceit and propaganda.

By the time Katrina came around too many people had started to realize the truth. They couldn't spin what the American people were watching on TV the way they controlled the message with the war, with embedded journalists, and no pictures of coffins which is why so many Americans can't bring themselves to care about what's going on in Iraq. They reacted when they saw the torture photos of Abu Grahib but those were ignored and suppressed pretty quickly.

Any future attempts to pursue another coup will have the added advantage being able to study what didn't work about this one.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/bush_advisers_speak_out

WASHINGTON – Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."

Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."

Their comments are a part of an oral history of the Bush White House that Vanity Fair magazine compiled for its February issue, which hits newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and nationally on Jan. 6. Vanity Fair published comments by current and former government officials, foreign ministers, campaign strategists and numerous others on topics that included Iraq, the anthrax attacks, the economy and immigration.

Read more: AP via Yahoo News

---

This is a real "no shit" moment.

Neither has the United States or the World

small consolation that "Bush" never recovered politically...:eyes:

A lot of N.O. residents never recovered from Katrina either, and they're a whole lot worse off because of that fool, so he just needs to stop his whining and go away.

He's still living in a trailer that's outgassing noxious fumes?

for me it was staring into his eyes during his 'pet goat' moment and realizing that the fucker was involved.

...tipped it at an angle first.

NGU.

is beyond me.

"These guys were pains in the butt who had to be accommodated."

To the end of deceiving millions of voters who got nothing from the party. That is the key to the rep's failure, that they are a gang of users and fakes.

Their entire concern over the 4,000 dead Americans is how it affected Stupid's approval rating. Same thing with the 9/11 victims and all of the dead wounded soldiers in Iraq.

:hurts:

That Bush actually gives a fig about the Crescent City!!