Well, let me join the dogpile. The more I
think about that miserable laundry-list speech of his, the madder it makes
me. I’ve been watching cable news and WWL’s online stream for the past few
days, and Bush’s speech was as canned and unrealistic as if it had been
phoned in from Mars. All day long, stories of incredible suffering, armed
mobs of looters roaming the streets, babies and their mothers in desperate
conditions … and the president rattles off a policy speech in which he
stops to thank a Texas county executive? Pod’s right: the continued
viability of his presidency depends on how he handles this thing. It will
take nothing for the “Bush doesn’t care” meme to circulate through the
culture, especially as desperate Louisiana people start to grumble about all
the Louisiana National Guardsmen serving over in Iraq instead of helping
their own families and neighbors who have nothing.