Posted by
D W W Robertson on Friday, April 25, 2008 1:07:15 PM
McCain Faults Bush Response to Gulf Storm
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: April 25, 2008
BATON ROUGE, La. — Senator John McCain took direct aim at the Bush administration on Thursday as he stood in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the area hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and declared the handling of the disaster “terrible and disgraceful” and pledged that it would never happen again.
Asked at a news conference outside St. David’s Catholic Church if he traced the failure of leadership straight to the top, Mr. McCain, who has said he wants to campaign with President Bush, said emphatically, “Yes.”
Later, Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus that if the disaster had happened on his watch, he would have landed his plane “at the nearest Air Force base and come over personally.”
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McCain took a cheap shot at Bush with his criticism of the Katrina response. He falls right in line with the “government needs to save me” crowd. Look, flying to the disaster area is good for morale and PR. But that isn’t what is going to fulfill the promise never to handle a future disaster the way this disaster was handled.
The truth is that our country is too big for a federal response even to huge disasters. What we need is local disasters response forces and local responsibility. Bill Clinton’s FEMA failed. He missed a great chance to explain carefully that a large centralized government, which is what the Democrats want, is what allows these problems to happen.
It is easy to say what should have been done after the fact. Criticizing the “little things” like making an appearance at the site is not constructive. McCain runs the risk of alienating the conservative base of the Republican Party that he needs to court.