Thoughts on the President's Speech

What a different role we witnessed last night for President Bush.  Bush the domestic has been something of a rarity for this administration.  For almost five years the president has been bogged down in a global war on terrorism with sketchy results and a maddening war in Iraq that has tested the president’s credibility on more than one occasion.  The best-known domestic issues for which Bush accepts credit is the embattled No Child Left Behind program, which has less support nationally than his handling of Iraq, and his unprecedented tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans along with his record setting tax breaks for Big Oil.

Yet last night we saw a president bent on doing whatever it takes to reconstruct the Gulf Coast region left devastated by Katrina.  In doing so the president also acknowledged the failures of the federal government in its response to the crisis.  The president has promised to make right with both the middle class that were largely able to escape and the poverty stricken masses who were not so fortunate.  Once again the president wishes to focus on the federal government’s role in the social security of its citizens.

Much has been compared to Mr. Bush’s other major reconstruction effort in Iraq.  As stark as the differences are, Iraq is the only major reconstruction effort offered by this administration for which to judge the newest endeavor.  Unlike Iraq, the devastation of the Gulf Coast region was not self inflicted and not brought about by choice and the Gulf Coast will not require a massive military combat effort either.  But the attention and focus by this administration must be greater than that given to Iraq, or lack thereof.  The president is dealing with a voting populous and an angry America stubborn at viewing the federal government’s response as non-existent at best.  Appropriately, the president’s own reconstruction is also at stake.

The president’s answer for such a failure by his self-created big government is bigger government.  By expanding the government’s role in catastrophic events with the advent of Homeland Security, the president’s answer now is to increase the welfare role of government not necessarily with those who are poor but to those who are without solace. An endeavor of monumental scale goes without saying when the financial status of this country is considered, and that congress is controlled by the most conservative right wing agendas in a hundred years.  Already operating with the largest deficit in the history of this country, not to mention bottomless pockets for a war in Iraq with no end in sight, it must only be necessary and impossible to continue on this fiscal path with Mr. Bush’s prized tax cuts for the wealthy in place.

The president’s call to make this "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen” is big talk for an administration that has for the last five years been totally negligent in convincing the public of its domestic agenda.  Not to mention coming from a country that almost single handedly rebuilt Western Europe and all of Japan.  If this new reconstruction effort is to be on a grander scale than that, then this president must learn to better manage not only his sloppy world affairs but also put an unprecedented focus on the Southland which voted for him almost 60-40.

The outlook must be larger than the goals for this reconstruction, and the planning must be measured in years not in primetime speeches designed for political talk.  One can only hope that the federal government this time will be more successful than the last Union reconstruction of the South.

All in all, the president has set some huge goals.  We’ll see if the results match.

Tags:
Katrina, Bush Speech, Repair