Is the Left Prepared?

It is perfectly appropriate to express a mixture of shock and awe at the Bush administration's callous lack  of preparedness in dealing with Katrina.  But are we preparing for what could be another tragic result  of the disaster?    The fact is that Katrina just might save Bush's Presidency.

I first brought this up to Paul Krugman at Eschacon.  He thought it very unlikely.  I then wrote a post about it on September 5.  My concern is that the vast public works project that will follow Katrina will turn  Bush and his Republican friends into heroes.

It is starting even sooner than I feared. The front page of today's New York Times notes that "A building boom is underway..." Later in the article the writer quotes Professor Steiner as saying  that "the rebuilding of Chicago after the great fire of 1871 or San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake do not compare."  It is clear that this is the third largest displacement of citizens in U.S. history.  Only the Civil War and the Great Depression forced more people to move in this country. (In the first case Lincoln was President, in the second, Roosevelt, in the third, Shrub!!)

I hope that I am wrong, but this kind of enormous activity will temporarily do  great things for the economy.  This is the kind of spending the liberals wanted Bush to do in order to get us out of the recession.  Instead he chose to give money to the richest amongst us with his tax cuts. There will come a day of reckoning. We absolutely cannot afford tax cuts and increased spending. But Bush is betting on that day coming after he is safely  back on the Ranch.

He will spend whatever it takes.  He will seem enormously competent. Some of the evidence of Bush's gutted FEMA has receded as  Michael Brown has  resigned. In its stead, we will see signs of accomplishments laced with pride.  Again, in today's Times: "At four giant staging areas across the region, FEMA is assembling tens of thousands of mobile homes and trailers."

Please tell me what is wrong with this argument.  More importantly, tell me what our side has done to prepare in case it is right.

Comments

[blogsister]

Bustard,
It's terrible but true. You may be right. The only way to put the reins on these guys is to carefully monitor the contracts Bush gives out. The boomlet for W's pals is already a scandal.

[bbbustard]

Thanks for your comment. We have to keep a careful eye - absolutely. But somehow, and clearly I don't know how, we have to have a strategy ready as this occurs. We cannot keep on being caught by suprise by these guys' methods.