Taipei Times: Preventing Katrina fiasco from eclipsing the Bush's 2nd term

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

It's all about Bush, isn't it?

Team Bush blames locals for delays

COUNTERATTACK: The US president's advisers and senior officials are regrouping after receiving a hammering from both sides of politics over their response to the hurricane

THE GUARDIAN , WASHINGTON
Tuesday, Sep 06, 2005,Page 7

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/09/06/2003270580

Bush administration officials on Sunday blamed state and local officials for the delays in bringing relief to New Orleans, as US President George W. Bush struggled to fend off the most serious political crisis of his presidency. His top officials continued to be pilloried on television talkshows by liberals and conservatives alike, but the White House began to show signs of an evolving strategy to prevent the relief fiasco from eclipsing the president's second term.

The outrage over the government's relief effort has hit Bush at a time when he is already weakened by the gruelling war in Iraq. The threat is not only to his place in history; it could also cripple his second-term agenda, undermining his plans to privatize the social-security system and to end inheritance tax.

The White House drew encouragement from an initial poll suggesting most Republican voters were sticking by him, and his supporters also pointed to Bush's track record of recovering from mistakes. His initial response to the Sept. 11 attacks was also sharply criticized. With that in mind, the first plank in the political recovery strategy has been to try to make up for lost time. The second element of the White House plan is to insist, in an echo of the Sept. 11 attacks, that the scale of the disaster, the combination of a hurricane and the collapse of the levee system around New Orleans, could not have been foreseen.

Bush was castigated for saying on Wednesday: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." It was pointed out that there had been a string of investigations and reports in recent years which had predicted the disaster almost exactly.