Here and There

You know things are bad for this Republican administration when conservative columnists like David Brooks publicly slam its pathetic response to the hurricane in New Orleans.

Speaking with Jim Lehrer and other journalists on The News Hour, Brooks brought up the idea that a disaster of this scale is exactly the type of event that brings about a massive change in the national consciousness. Brooks’ comments really struck a chord with me. It’s one thing to read Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd (arguably the Times’ most liberal columnists) parsing the failures of the government when it comes to rescue and evacuation efforts. Coming instead from someone who admittedly “support[s] [Bush's] politics quite often,” Brooks’ thoughts made me think there finally may be a political sea change (bad analogy?) on the horizon.

For those who don’t feel like opening the link to the transcript of the talk, I’ll list some of the more prescient offerings:

“in 1897 there was the famous Johnstown Flood, a pond owned by millionaires including Andrew Carnegie flooded the town of Johnstown. The public anger over that helped spawn the Progressive Movement.”

“in 1927 you had the great Mississippi Flood, which flooded New Orleans. And there you have first of all, you had great demand for the government to get involved in disaster relief which had not happened much before then. And that helped lead the way to the New Deal.”

“they (the government) violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn’t happen; it’s like leaving wounded on the battlefield.”

“this was really a de-legitimization of institutions. Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years — this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.”
“it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions.”

“Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was terrible.”

I actually enjoy agreeing with my polemical adversaries. It means we’re all onto something, and that something could be an irrefutable truth…

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