In today’s Washington Post, E.J. Dionne argues that the Bush era is over.
The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.
True, but what Dionne forgets is that it wasn’t long after September 11th that we returned to poltics as usual. Democrats manuvered for political advantage and used the debate of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to advance the interests of their allies in the labor unions. And there was no truce from the far left. Just ask Michael Moore.
And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country’s consciousness. Yesterday’s resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.
Prior to Bush’s trip to the Gulf Coast at the beginning of the month, I argued myself on September 2nd that Bush needed a “bullhorn” moment. But that moment never came. The public has clearly not been pleased with the way that government at all levels responded to Katrina, and the President has paid the price for that as his approval ratings have dipped to their lowest level ever.
For his own ideological reasons, Dionne concludes from this that the Bush era is over and that Bush himself is now irrelevant. This is an absurd conclusion. There are three years left in the President’s term and he is far from irrelevant. The Republican Party, and Bush, can bounce back from this, but only if Bush shows the kind of leadership he did after 9/11.
