"Newhouse News Service, in an article posted late Tuesday night at The Times-Picayune web site, reported: 'No one can say they didn't see it coming. . . . Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.' . . .
" 'The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House. . . . In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana's chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need.'
"Local officials are now saying, the article reported, that had Washington heeded their warnings about the dire need for hurricane protection, including building up levees and repairing barrier islands, 'the damage might not have been nearly as bad as it turned out to be.' "
The President's Challenge
A New York Times editorial lays out the challenge ahead.
"As the levees of Lake Pontchartrain gave way, flooding New Orleans, it seemed pretty clear that in this case, government did not live up to the job.
"But this seems like the wrong moment to dwell on fault-finding, or even to point out that it took what may become the worst natural disaster in American history to pry President Bush out of his vacation. All the focus now must be on rescuing the survivors. Beyond that lies a long and painful recovery, which must begin with a national vow to help all the storm victims and to save and repair New Orleans.
"People who think of that graceful city and the rest of the Mississippi Delta as tourist destinations must have been reminded, watching the rescue operations, that the real residents of this area are in the main poor and black. The only resources most of them will have to fall back on will need to come from the federal government. . . .
"Right now it looks as if rescuing New Orleans will be a task much more daunting than any city has faced since the San Francisco fire of 1906. It must be a mission for all of us."
A Washington Post editorial notes: "President Bush, who has maintained his weeks-long holiday schedule without regard to the bloodshed in Iraq, is breaking off his summer idyll two days early to tend to the fallout from Katrina. . . .
"We hope that National Guard manpower, supplemented by active-duty Army troops if necessary, is sufficient to respond quickly to the immense needs of those places. The human response must be equal to the devastation wrought by nature."
The Criticism
This White House is particularly attuned to imagery. (See below, for example, to read about its efforts to keep an aircraft carrier out of Bush's backdrop yesterday.) So it was perhaps a slip to allow ABC's Martha Raddatz to snap this photo of Bush playing a guitar presented to him backstage yesterday by a country singer.
Left-leaning bloggers are contrasting that image to those from the ruins of the Gulf Coast.
