Now They Tell Us

Time magazine concludes: "Leaders were afraid to actually lead, reluctant to cost businesses money, break jurisdictional rules or spawn lawsuits. They were afraid, in other words, of ending up in an article just like this one."

Advancing Republican Goals

Edmund L. Andrews writes in the New York Times: "Republican leaders in Congress and some White House officials see opportunities in Hurricane Katrina to advance longstanding conservative goals like giving students vouchers to pay for private schools, paying churches to help with temporary housing and scaling back business regulation."

Jonathan Weisman and Amy Goldstein write in The Washington Post: "After the political tidal wave of 1994 swept conservatives into control of Congress, Republicans doggedly tried -- and repeatedly failed -- to repeal a Depression-era law that requires federal contractors to pay workers the prevailing wages in their communities. Eleven days after the deluge of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush banished the requirement, at least temporarily, with the stroke of his pen. . . .

"In another gain for the administration, a $51.8 billion relief bill that Congress passed on Thursday included a significant change to federal contracting regulations. Holders of government-issued credit cards will be allowed to spend up to $250,000 on Katrina-related contracts and purchases, without requiring them to seek competitive bids or to patronize small businesses or companies owned by minorities and women. Before Thursday, only purchases of up to $2,500 in normal circumstances or $15,000 in emergencies were exempt."

The Spoils of Disaster

Yochi J. Dreazen writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "The Bush administration is importing many of the contracting practices blamed for spending abuses in Iraq as it begins the largest and costliest rebuilding effort in U.S. history.

"The first large-scale contracts related to Hurricane Katrina, as in Iraq, were awarded without competitive bidding, and using so-called cost-plus provisions that guarantee contractors a certain profit regardless of how much they spend."

Reuters reports: "Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

"At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast."

Bush's Trip

Bush is wrapping up a two-day "fact finding" trip to the Gulf Coast today. I'll have more about it tomorrow.

The big question: Will Bush risk an encounter with any angry storm victims?

As Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times: "One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were 'scared to death' of the reaction.

" 'If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?' said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove."

One quick note from pool reporter Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune: While Bush spent last night aboard the USS Iwo Jima, "poolers were assigned to bunks aboard luxury Prevost touring buses. Men in one, women in another. The men's bus is fresh off The Anger Management Tour, which had featured Fifty Cent and Eminem."

Brownie Watch

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times about just how it happened that White House spokesman Scott McClellan was still praising the work of Michael D. Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, hours after Brown's removal from day-to-day management of the hurricane was pretty much a done deal.

Sanger writes that "how the White House moved, in a matter of days, from the president's praise of a man he nicknamed 'Brownie' to a rare public reassignment explains much about fears within the administration that its delayed response to the disaster could do lasting damage to both Mr. Bush's power and his legacy. But more important to some members of the administration, it dented the administration's aura of competence. . . .

"Mr. Bush, his aides acknowledge, is loath to fire members of his administration or to take public actions that are tantamount to an admission of a major mistake. But the hurricane was different, they say: the delayed response was playing out every day on television, and Mr. Brown, fairly or unfairly, seemed unaware of crucial events, particularly the scenes of chaos and death in the New Orleans convention center."

Race and Poverty

Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post: "Hurricane Katrina has thrust the twin issues of race and poverty at President Bush, who faces steep challenges in dealing with both because of a domestic agenda that envisions deep cuts in long-standing anti-poverty programs and relationships with many black leaders frayed by years of mutual suspicion."

Bumiller writes in the New York Times: "From the political perspective of the White House, Hurricane Katrina destroyed more than an enormous swath of the Gulf Coast. The storm also appears to have damaged the carefully laid plans of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, to make inroads among black voters and expand the reach of the Republican Party for decades to come. . . .

"But behind the scenes in the West Wing, there has been anxiety and scrambling -- after an initial misunderstanding, some of the president's advocates say, of the racial dimension to the crisis."

What the President Meant to Say

At another contentious briefing on Friday, McClellan addressed Bush's infamous declaration on a live television interview Thursday that "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

"What the President was referring to is that you had Hurricane Katrina hit, and then it passed New Orleans. And if you'll remember, all the media reports, or a number of media reports at that time, that Monday -- even all the way to the Tuesday papers, were talking to people and saying that New Orleans had dodged a bullet. So I think that's what the President is referring to, is that people weren't anticipating those levees, after the hurricane had passed New Orleans, breaching. Many people weren't. And you can go back and look at the news coverage at that time."

Internet Humor

Robin Abcarian writes in the Los Angeles Times: "In the picture , residents of New Orleans make their way through waist-deep water as President Bush stands next to his father, grinning and displaying a striped bass that he's just caught. 'Bush's vacation' is the caption of the photographic gag that has made its way around the Internet this week.

"In another doctored photo , the president strums a guitar and appears to be serenading a weeping African American woman holding a baby in front of the Louisiana Superdome.

"Perverse though it might seem, the juxtaposition of Hurricane Katrina's human costs with the perceived sluggishness of the federal government's response has proved to be a boon for political humorists -- particularly those operating in cyberspace, where dissemination is instantaneous."