Fw: Waiting for a Leader - New York Times

----- Original Message -----
From: "Vaughn Mock, Janice" <JVaughnMock@Nossaman.com>

Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 8:55 AM
Subject: Waiting for a Leader - New York Times

September 1, 2005

Waiting for a Leader

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday,
especially given the level of national distress and the need for words
of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this
administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed.
He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day
celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and
blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public
that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised
that everything would work out in the end.

We will, of course, endure, and the city of New Orleans must come back.
But looking at the pictures on television yesterday of a place abandoned
to the forces of flood, fire and looting, it was hard not to wonder
exactly how that is going to come to pass. Right now, hundreds of
thousands of American refugees need our national concern and care.
Thousands of people still need to be rescued from imminent peril. Public
health threats must be controlled in New Orleans and throughout southern
Mississippi. Drivers must be given confidence that gasoline will be
available, and profiteering must be brought under control at a moment
when television has been showing long lines at some pumps and spot
prices approaching $4 a gallon have been reported.

Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in
an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to
counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday
- which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he
understood the depth of the current crisis.

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate
needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so
inadequate.
Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have
fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city,
which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy
wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's
surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in
slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the
area's flood protection?

It would be some comfort to think that, as Mr. Bush cheerily announced,
America "will be a stronger place" for enduring this crisis. Complacency
will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that
global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes. But
since this administration won't acknowledge that global warming exists,
the chances of leadership seem minimal.