We Americans are big on celebrating anniversaries ? the birth of the nation, the births of our greatest presidents, even the birth of a new year. But down on the Gulf Coast, the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is a commemoration, not a celebration, in the same way the other recent national tragedy, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, is now remembered on its anniversary day.
President Bush has marked the occasion of the devastation of Katrina with trips to Mississippi and Louisiana that were both advisable and unavoidable for him, in light of his tardy and visibly inadequate response a year ago. The photo of the president peering down on the destruction as he flew over in Air Force on his return from vacation remains politically devastating to him.
Also remembered is his subsequent return to New Orleans, and his televised speech from historic Jackson Square, in which he pledged that “throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives.”
A year later, the residents of the city, and the other stricken areas of the Gulf Coast, are waiting to see much more tangible evidence that the urgency and scope of the task are being addressed by Bush?s administration.
The dismal performance of its Federal Emergency Management Agency, now folded into the equaled embattled Department of Homeland Security, is symbolized by the presence of the now-infamous FEMA trailers. Many serve as today?s temporary homes for the homeless but many others stand unoccupied in remote places.
In Bush?s speech in the also devastated Biloxi, Miss., before moving on to New Orleans, he sought to stem the flood of criticism by noting that Congress has approved more than $110 billion for aid and reconstruction of the Gulf Coast.
But the White House has acknowledged that less than half, or $44 billion, has been spent, and the region continues to be a scene of shattered homes and unprecedented debris.
The president?s latest shirt-sleeved appearances on the empty and forlorn city streets of the Coast were only the latest of several repeated visits demonstrating his commitment.
But the slow pace of federal assistance toward recovery, visibly all around him, has inevitably diminished his ability to project optimism and confidence in his pledge.
In that other tragedy where Bush made another famous shirt-sleeved appearance, at Ground Zero of the Sept. 11 attacks, his strategists have been much more successful in converting a disaster into political advantage.
His fighting pledge to hit back, in which he told the crowd amid the rubble that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us soon,” became the centerpiece of a climb in popularity, translated into his re-election in 2004.
The subsequent invasion of Afghanistan and destruction of the Taliban regime that had given haven to the al-Qaida perpetrators of Sept. 11 sustained the patriotic fervor at home, though the chief architect, Osama bin Laden, remained at large.
And Bush?s pivot to Iraq and the ouster and eventual capture of Saddam Hussein continued to maintain the president?s public support.
But the failure to convert the swift military success in Iraq into a stable successor regime, and to quell the subsequent insurgency and growing sectarian violence, has stripped away much of that support, even as the failure to bring tangible recovery to the devastated Gulf Coast has also taken its toll on Bush?s credibility.
In fact, the juxtaposition of the two circumstances ? the drawn-out instability in Iraq and the continued lack of visible evidence of real progress in the reconstruction of New Orleans and elsewhere on the coast ? now mocks the president?s earlier image as a decisive and effective leader.
In terms of his hopes to rally public support to keep Republican control of Congress in the midterm elections now barely more than two months off, this first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, paired with the seeming stalemate in Iraq, is an unfortunate reminder of what has gone terribly wrong with his presidency.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
