Mike the Usurper wrote:
The Katrina debacle wasn't about fixing the levees, it was about handling evacuations properly and failing that, getting emergency workers to the places they were needed immediately after.

I don't entirely agree. I think thats half the picture. With regard to confidence in this administration, its the whole picture. Clearly, as you said, they didn't respond competently. People are trusting them to handle terrorist attacks. They've asked for support in a war no one understands and for the unilateral ability to spy on people and imprison them. They got the people's support for those things, in 2004, because most people trusted them to do the right stuff. This event is a close analog to a terrorist attack. They failed to handle it well, and that broke the trust, which I think is the reason they lost in 2006. I think people are asking, if they can't be trusted with this, then can they be trusted with Iraq?

But, the Katrina story as a whole is bigger then that, and thats why I don't think anyone wants to talk about it. It doesn't work as a partisan issue, because Democratic leadership in Louisiana may have been as much a problem as the Bush administration. The right wing plays that up as an excuse, and its no excuse. The administration was clearly incompetent. One's incompetence is not excused by another's incompetence. And most of us don't vote in Louisiana.

More importantly; the fact is that this was an avoidable catasrophy. Even if the Administration had handled it beautifully it still would have been a problem, because we anticipated that this was going to happen and did not act decisively to stop it. Its an indictment of the whole system. No one cared about the people in the 9th ward. Everyone in the city knew the area was doomed. The people who lived there were poor. And everyone's attitude was that its stupid to live there and if they die it's their own damn problem. Thats a terrible attitude to have. And I think that any President, or Louisiana politician, who has sat in power for the past 30 years, and didn't move the ball forward on this, deserves a bit of the blame.

And I think everyone knows that. If the partisan blame game started back up on Katrina, everyone would loose. Its mutually assured destruction. So instead we're focused on other things.

I don't think the people trust the Democrats either. They're being given a chance to prove themselves. Its their game to loose now. But they have a real problem... the Republicans handed them a ticking bomb as they went out the door... We're probably not going to get Democracy in Iraq. It probably isn't possible. There is a good chance that we are going to get a massive increase in the violence there. And you can rest assured that regardless of what policy position the Democrats take on Iraq, Republicans will blame their policy for the problems we're going to see there. The buck just got passed.

So, those who've argued with conservatives for years that going into Iraq was a mistake can look forward to being blamed by conservatives when that prognosis turns out to be correct. It has already started.

RE: For Conservatives, It’s Back to Basics