I profoundly wish we could all suspend politics and simply concentrate on the relief efforts along the Gulf Coast, but given the administration’s focus on political damage control, that’s impossible. Moreover, as the DLC pointed out yesterday, the administration must admit its mistakes or continue them.It’s beginning to look like they may not have much choice. The administration’s aggressive political strategy over the last week–alternating from rationalizations to blame-shifting to claims that the president has now saved the day–is failing dismally. Even the most fool-proof Rovian tactic–filling the air with noise and creating an atmosphere of polarization so foul that people give up trying to “understand” and view events through a strictly partisan prism–is failing, as more and more rank-and-file Republicans, and even conservative opinion-leaders, find the damning facts uncontestable. The single biggest symbol of this development is today’s Robert Novak column. The Prince of Darkness, Washington’s most reliable barometer of the conservative zeitgeist, barbecued the administration for both its handling of Katrina, and its ham-handed political response, which clearly has Republican Congressmen fearing for their re-elections. Novak goes out of his way to quote Rep. Chris Shays–hardly one of the Prince’s favorites, but a guy whose fate in 2006 could have a large bearing on the future control of Congress–as directly comparing the Bush White House to Nixon’s in its “sense of arrogance” and its belief that “loyalty and never admitting a mistake matter more than the truth.” Novak generally knows what he’s doing, and the Nixon analogy was a big shot across the bow of the White House to remind its occupants that GOP loyalty has its limits. Those of you old enough to remember Watergate, and those who have read about it, are probably aware there was a palpable turning point in 1974 when many Republicans abandoned Nixon out of outrage or political expedience. No, I am not suggesting that Bush is in the kind of peril that engulfed Nixon, but still, given the enormous partisan loyalty he has commanded in the past, wholesale GOP defections on a fundamental question of leadership, competence and honesty, are a danger sign to Bush of unprecedented magnitude.

Like a lot of Republicans, Sen. Rick Santorum of PA provided an initial response to the horrors of New Orleans last week that basically blamed the victims:

In a weekend interview with WTAE-TV about the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Santorum said: “You have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”

And like a lot of Republicans, Santorum is now furiously back-tracking, arguing that he was only talking about people with the means to leave New Orleans who refused to go.In the back-tracking race, Santorum is competing with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who drew fire for dealing with the New Orleans catastrophe by suggesting the city is not worth rebuilding. Now the ol’ wrestling coach is claiming he was only talking about how, not whether to rebuild New Orleans.It’s increasingly clear, as others have observed, that Katrina, and especially its impact on New Orleans, have provided something of a national Rorschach Test. Some people initially reacted with horror, concern and even guilt towards the victims; others immediately blamed them for leaving themslves in harm’s way and then behaving in a disorderly manner to survive. These reactions have not completely broken along partisan or ideological lines, but they have broken that way often enough to suggest that polarization is now affecting our basic sense of community.To put it baldly, the kind of people most affected by Katrina cannot count on the party running the federal government for anything other than the level of assistance dictated by public opionion. If Rick Santorum or Denny Hastert suddenly become serious advocates for serious relief aimed the affected populations, it will probably be because they failed that first Rorschach test, and are trying to compensate for it. Democrats have a clear responsibility, and a clear opportunity, to show they do indeed get it, and can do better in times of national crisis–the first time.

As a follow-up to his administration’s not-so-subtle efforts to blame state and local officials in Louisiana for the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans, the President announced today that he would lead an investigation into “what went wrong and why” on the federal end. This astonishing news raises several interesting questions:1) Does this mean Bush is now going to admit his administration did screw things up, contributing to an avoidable loss of life and untold damage to New Orleans and its people? 2) If so, doesn’t it sorta kinda violate the idea of objective investigations for the chief executive of the erring enterprise to head up the probe?3) Is Bush open to the idea that maybe his friend “Brownie,” whom he praised after the worst screw-ups as having done a “heck of a job,” actually did not do a “heck of a job” after all? 4) And how’s about the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security, the organization that employed and directed ol’ Brownie?5) While Bush hunts high and low for incompetents in his administration, will he leave the most likely suspects in charge of the relief and recovery effort in the Gulf Coast? Is ol’ Brownie, dismissed not long ago from his crushing responsibilities as a show horse enforcement official, the indispensable man in the operation? And insofar as Bush himself raised concerns about the implications of the botched recovery for homeland security, does he really want to keep DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in overall direction of the massive project? This whole thing is incredibly bizarre. The president who has never, ever, in more than four years, admitted a single mistake, and never fired anyone for anything other than the sin of admitting mistakes, is going to investigate his own administration for mistakes that he has yet to admit other than at the highest level of abstraction. Maybe that’s the whole idea: he’ll find someone who admitted a mistake, and blame the mistakes he won’t admit on them. Talking heads will roll.

With everything else going on this weekend, some may have forgotten that today commemorates the contributions of working Americans and the labor movement that represents them.This has obviously been a tough year for the labor movement, what with a sluggish economy, sky-rocketing health care and energy costs, never-ending pressure on jobs and wages from offshoring, continued corporate efforts to even further skew the balance of power between employers and employees–and of course, the split in the AFL-CIO.But interestingly enough, Americans seem to be appreciating the importance of unions, to themselves and to the country, as much as or more than ever. Check out this handy compilation of public opinion research data from Ruy Teixeira’s site. And let’s all work to make a better Labor Day possible next year.

On Friday I quoted at some length from a New Orleans Times-Picayune newsblog item about deaths occurring among people waiting for relief in the St. Bernard-Placquemines Parishes areas south and east of New Orleans. Congressman Charles Melancon, who represents the area, was the paper’s main source for the horrifying reports.Well, today Melancon wants the President of the United States to come see conditions on the ground in his district, in a statement that directly challenges the we-did-the-best-we-could, and it’s-the-state’s-fault spinathon coming out of the administration for the last several days. Here’s the summary from the T-P newsblog:

Today, 3rd District Congressman Charlie Melancon invited President Bush to personally tour the devastated areas outside New Orleans in Southeast Louisiana. President Bush has announced plans to be in Louisiana on Monday.Congressman Melancon’s comments on the invitation follow:”People in Plaquemines Parish, St. Bernard Parish and other affected area in the Southeast Louisiana’s 3rd District need to see that the federal government has not forgotten them.” “Today, I invited President Bush to join me on the ground in these parishes as soon as possible – ideally tomorrow – as we work to rescue survivors and get supplies where they are desperately needed.””The fact is that 124 hours after Katrina hit, Plaquemines Parish still had received little or no contact from FEMA. Other parishes in southeast Louisiana went days without hearing from federal officials – that’s unacceptable.””Thankfully, Louisiana State Senator Walter Boasso and local officials, along with the Louisiana National Guard, Louisiana State Police, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and other entities were able to reach folks on the ground. Together, we worked to put support efforts in motion and coordinate efforts to convey specific needs in the area to those who could take action. While slowly improving, conditions in parishes throughout Southeast Louisiana are beyond dire. Hundreds died among the thousands of residents who were stranded at Camp Katrina on Chalmette Landing. Areas nearby are equally grim. We need all the federal support we can get, and the only way to understand that is to witness it first hand.”

Melancon’s certainly right that it’s the lack of a prompt federal response that’s truly “unacceptable,” and probably right in assuming that you apparently have to be involved in a presidential photo op to get an appropriate degree of federal help even now.

Finally, finally, finally, there are some signs of federal action to relieve the primordial crisis in New Orleans, timed no doubt to coincide with the president’s disaster tour, but welcome nonetheless.There’s not much question the relief is late in coming, but the more important question now is this: is it enough?Here’s an editorial from the Times-Picayune posted this afternoon:

On the elevated portion of Interstate 10 near Orleans Avenue, a group of displaced people pushed a wheelchair carrying a dead woman. She wore pink pajama bottoms — and a white kitchen garbage bag on her head. People wandered around expressway on-ramps hoping for a ride to… anywhere. Outside the Superdome, refugees were crowded onto a concrete walkway. The situation inside the Dome was beyond hellish.Hurricane Katrina has created a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions. And if the main strategy for addressing that crisis is to evacuate the east bank of New Orleans, then local, state and federal officials need to move much faster to get people out. On streets across the city, people are in agony. And lives are in danger, because of looters, because of dwindling medical supplies, because of conditions that would strain even the healthiest of people.Security had improved in much of the city late Thursday and Friday. It was a relief to see so many uniformed men bearing machine guns patrolling expressways and major intersections. But in some parts of the city — particularly those slivers of Uptown New Orleans that suffered relatively little flood damage — the presence of law enforcement and relief agencies seemed minimal at best. In those same areas, some residents were still under the dangerous illusion that they could wait out Katrina’s aftermath at home, just as they waited out the hurricane itself. Others understood the dangers but had no way to travel and little hope of getting authorities’ attention. On Constantinople street near Prytania, a severely sunburned, diabetic 80-year-old had run out of insulin, and the woman who had given her shelter could get no assistance. On Belfast Street near Fontainebleau, two 93-year-olds needed to evacuate but could not. As more and more people clear out of the city indefinitely, those who remain are at even greater risk. People across the east bank need help in getting out, and lives will be lost if they do not get it.

In other words, photo-op relief efforts concentrated on the most visible problems are nice, but something more systematic needs to happen right away.And that brings me to the difficult but necessary subject of the politics of this. A lot of Republicans have claimed that Democrats are “politicizing” Katrina by raising questions about disaster preparations and relief efforts, especially in terms of FEMA’s languid pace in taking charge, the background of FEMA mission-drift and funding cuts, and the tardy White House focus on the crisis.But it’s now pretty clear the White House is politicizing the situation even more starkly and much more divisively. The underlying theme of the president’s tour of the region today is that things are going very well in places like Alabama and Mississippi with the right (literally and figuratively) state and local leadership. Meanwhile, the storyline continues, Bush has to go down to New Orleans (with the wrong, i.e., Democratic leadership) himself to get things turned around.This is apparently what Bush meant this morning before his departure from Washington when he said the relief effort wasn’t “acceptable.” He wasn’t talking about FEMA’s universally derided initial response; in Mobile, he told FEMA Director Michael Brown (or “Brownie,” as he called him) he was doing a great job. No, Bush’s stern disapproval was aimed at New Orleans and Baton Rouge.Watch the conservative blogs and news outlets; we’re about to see a big effort to scapegoat Kathleen Blanco, perhaps Ray Nagin, and even the stranded low-income people of New Orleans themselves, for the disaster that’s happened over the last few days; there have already been hints of this in so many places that I can’t begin to cite or link to them. Maybe that’s the price the victims of this nightmare have to pay for real and adequate federal relief, but it should not and will not go unchallenged.

For all the horror in New Orleans, it’s been clear that Katrina’s impact was actually more intense in suburban and rural areas south and east of the city, where the populations have largely been cut off from contact with the outside world, including the news media. Here’s an especially harrowing report from St. Bernard Parish, published tonight in the Times-Picayune newsblog. Note the time lines in this report; how much of this tragedy occurred well after Katrina left the area; and the implied reproach to non-existent federal help.

About 100 people have died at the Chalmette Slip after being pulled off their rooftops, waiting to be ferried up the river to the West Bank and bused out of the flood ravaged area, U.S. Rep. Charles Melancon, D-Napoleonville, said Thursday.About 1,500 people were at the slip on Thursday afternoon, where critical supplies like food and water are scarce, he said. Melancon expressed serious frustration with the slow pace of getting these items to the people waiting to finish their journey to safety. Many of those at the slip were evacuated from a shelter set up at Chalmette High School that suffered massive flooding as the waters rose during Hurricane Katrina. Melancon said people are being plucked out of their water-surrounded houses, but the effort to get them out of Chalmette and provide them with sufficient sustenance is the problem.While he did not directly criticize the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Melancon said they are ultimately responsible for making sure that people are taken care of. “That is where the buck stops,” said Melancon at a briefing at the state Office of Emergency Preparedness.People at the slip indicated that 100 people had died since they arrived, although Melancon said he did not know how they perished. Melancon said he saw 300 people sent on a tug-boat pulled barge to the Algiers landing, but there weren’t any buses once they landed.

We’re just now beginning to come to grips with the region-wide death toll, and how much of it might have been avoided with a massive and immediate federal response.

I’m not sure how calmly I can talk about today’s developments in New Orleans. Let’s take a quick inventory. You had:* Thousands of hungry, thirsty, sick and desperate people crowding evacuation points amidst dead bodies and ongoing violence.* Stretched-to-the-max and sometimes beseiged police officers having to siphon gasoline from parked cars to patrol the streets, and after stopping looters in stores, expropriating goods to keep themselves hydrated, fed and clothed.* More failed efforts to fix the breaches in the levee system, even as new flooding was temporarily halted by an equalization of water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain (in other words, maximum flooding).* A second straight televised speech by the President of the United States that exhibited an eery disconnection from events on the ground, and perhaps a panicked realization that this is quickly becoming a potential political disaster for the administration.* A public comment by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representativescasually suggesting that New Orleans might not be worth rebuilding.Eventually federal help will arrive; Guard units did start showing up this evening to restore order, and evacuations from the Convention Center and the Superdome resumed.But the suffering endured by the most vulnerable people in New Orleans in the interim cannot be erased, and the damage to the city–physically, economically, and morally–during the last few days of chaos will make the task of recovery and reconstruction (assuming Denny Hastert lets it go forward) vastly more extensive, expensive, and potentially futile.This has been another one of those unacknowledged “accountability moments” for the Bush administration. The president is not responsible for Acts of God, but by God, he should be responsible for acts of the federal government when Americans most need it.

Despite the spreading horror in New Orleans (Mayor Ray Nagin said earlier today that the number of deaths in the city had probably already gone into the thousands), there are a few signs of the city’s quirky and indomitable sprit still in view. Check out this item from the Times-Picayune’s invaluable newsblog, posted this afternoon:

In the garden behind St. Louis Cathedral on Royal Street lies an incredible tangle of zig-zagging broken tree trunks and branches, mixed with smashed wrought iron fences. But right in the middle, a statue of Jesus is still standing, unscathed by the storm, save for the left thumb and index finger, which are missing.The missing digits immediately set off speculation of divine intervention.New Orleans has a long history praying to saints for guidance and protection in times of great peril. In fact it was Our Lady of Prompt Succor who was said to be responsible for saving the Ursulines Convent in the French Quarter from a raging fire that consumed the rest of the city centuries ago.Since then, New Orlenians have prayed to the saint for protection from natural disasters. On Saturday, Archbishop Alfred Hughes read a prayer over the radio asking for Our Lady’s intervention to spare the city a direct hit by Hurricane Katrina. Many in the Quarter are now saying it was the hand of Jesus, the missing digits to be precise, that flicked the hurricane east just a little to keep the city from suffering a direct blow. And the search is one for those missing fingers.Shortly after Katrina passed, several men went to Robert Buras, who owns the Royal Street Grocery and told him they know who has the finger. Buras said he’d give them all the water and beer they need if they bring him the finger. They told him they’d find it and asked to be paid upfront. But Buras told them he wouldn’t take it on credit. “I’m going to find Jesus’ finger,” Buras said. ”I’ve got a lead on it.”

The Royal Street Grocery, BTW, has remained open through the whole saga, so far at least, though the owner has to toss goods to purchasers through an upstairs window where’s he’s stored his most valuable wares.Here’s another tale of French Quarter imperturbability from the T-P newsblog:

Johnny White’s Sport Bar on Bourbon Street at Orleans Avenue didn’t close Tuesday night, and had six patrons at 8 a.m. drinking at the bar.“Monday night, they came by after curfew and wanted us to close,” bartender Perry Bailey, 60, said of officers then patrolling the French Quarter. But all we did was shut the doors and stayed open.”

Unfortunately, most of this anarchic good cheer will soon have to come to an end with the Governor’s mandatory evacuation order. Current estimates are that the city may be shut down for three to four months. New Orleans truly needs the Hand of God to provide a future that’s anything like its past.

I should be getting some real work done, but I’m finding it hard to stop thinking about what’s happening in my favorite city right now, and trying to follow developments through the news media.Unfortunately, media coverage is at best spotty. To some extent that’s understandable; after all, there are very few “on the scene” reporters, and information on key issues like progress towards plugging the gaps in the levee system is hard to come by. Still, Atrios has a very good point about the inability or disinclination of the media to provide basic explanations of the horrific images they keep showing:

It’s a shame that from what I’ve seen in the media they don’t seem to understand the importance of maps. Disaster footage is flashed randomly on the screen, devoid of any genuine geographic context. Maps appropriately scaled for the location of the footage would provide actual useful information. Otherwise, it’s mostly just disaster porn.

If you know a little bit about the geography of New Orelans and its many wonderful neighborhoods, these random images are maddening, since a flooded house in Bywater pretty much looks like a flooded house in the Irish Channel. Most viewers probably don’t care, and in the end, it doesn’t matter what I know when, but some effort to match images with words if not maps would be helpful. Even nightmares need scripts.