Mining Rove’s Katrina Legacy

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3316/mining_roves_katrina_legacy/

By Amanda Terkel

Karl Rove isn’t called a “mastermind” for nothing. He announced his resignation at the perfect time—right before the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.

The media talked about his role in the CIA leak investigation, the U.S. attorney scandal, GOP election victories (and failures), and the Iraq war—all important topics. But they largely ignored his management of the administration’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

We all remember “Brownie,” the incomprehensibly incompetent FEMA director Michael Brown, who had no idea evacuees were using the New Orleans convention center as an evacuation shelter. But Rove was the man President Bush quietly put in charge of overseeing the administration’s response plan. Rove had no expertise in homeland security or disaster relief. His role was to make sure that the reconstruction efforts enhanced Bush’s political image.

By almost all accounts, Rove failed. One of the most memorable images from Hurricane Katrina is Bush looking out the window of Air Force One at the Gulf Coast destruction below, symbolizing an out-of-touch commander-in-chief who waited two days after Katrina struck before cutting short his vacation. Rove used Katrina to push the administration’s failed ideologies on the Gulf Coast, advocating segregated schools, reduced pay for low-wage reconstruction workers, and limited government health care. Political allies received large no-bid contracts. Americans were outraged. A CBS News poll six months after the hurricane found that just32 percent of the public approved of the way Bush handled the disaster.

The one area in which Rove succeeded was the politicization of the government’s response to national tragedies. This week, current FEMA head R. David Paulson, promised, “I do not see this country allowing another Katrina-type event.” But that type of event—and Rove’s politicization—is playing out right now, in Utah, at collapse of the Crandall Canyon mine.

FULL story at link.