Hurricane may tarnish Bush image
"Frankly, the job is so monstrous down there, there's a possibility that even if he performs better than anyone can realistically expect, it could still have a negative impact," said Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.
Maybe some kind of defining moment — the Louisiana equivalent of Bush at the bullhorn after Sept. 11 — would help, he says.
Nationally, both Democrats and Republicans have taken shots at the president's handling of the crisis as corpses floated through the streets and thousands of New Orleanians waited helplessly for aid.
Republican Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts called the government's response "an embarrassment." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, asked, "If we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"
Some, like Jesse Jackson, have raised the issue of race — most of those stranded the past several days are black and poor. "In this same city of New Orleans where slave ships landed," Jackson said, "where the legacy of 246 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow discrimination, that legacy is unbroken today."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is black, disagrees: "That Americans would somehow in a color-affected way decide who to help and who not to help, I don't believe it. Americans are a very generous people."
In Utah, Joe Cannon, the head of the state Republican Party, dismisses blanket criticism of the president.
"The Democrats blame George Bush for every evil thing going on in the universe," Cannon said. "I think the weather is a bit of a stretch."
Cities and states have a responsibility, he added. "The federal government cannot fix every problem in the world."
Wayne Holland, chairman of the Utah Democratic Party, says his office has been receiving calls from Utahns around the state who are asking, "Why isn't the president doing what he's supposed to be doing" as commander-in-chief?
"It's been a lapse in response," Holland argued. "It hasn't looked like a priority."
For the first few days after the hurricane, says Ted Wilson, a former Salt Lake City mayor, Bush looked "terrible. His flyover, with him peering out the window of the helicopter, was a rather ridiculous gesture." Still, Wilson says Bush can emerge politically unscathed, with his poll numbers at least remaining at their mediocre levels, "if he really delivers. If he doesn't, we could have a president under siege."
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