The Best We Can Do

As Hurricane Katrina and Bush Administration ineptitude assailed the Gulf Coast this past week, two things became glaringly clear: the dire need for competency in both our government and our press. And how one institution cannot function effectively without the other. The White House, the mainstream media and the segment of our society who questions neither all have an unwritten contract that was breached during this storm. The tacit agreement to spin, report and receive news as sport or entertainment or nuisance. This fell away in the wake of Katrina. The breach: unmitigated reality.

As the enormity of the disaster unfolded, network and cable news anchors – from the genially detached Brian Williams of “NBC Nightly News” and Paula Zahn of CNN to the normally smug and reptilian Shepard Smith of FOX News - expressed outrage and frustration, rejected spin and demanded answers when the levees broke and help was nowhere in sight. By Thursday night, Williams grew increasingly irate as his broadcast proceeded:

WILLIAMS: Rescue workers overwhelmed, food and water scarce, people left behind, becoming more and more unglued. Where is the help? The people of New Orleans are asking repeatedly in Washington, ‘Are you watching? Are you listening.’

FEMA Director Michael Brown – former commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association who has no prior emergency-management experience – seemed completely unaware that Paula Zahn was surprised he’d just heard about the people huddled in the New Orleans Convention Center without food and water for days.

BROWN: And so, this -- this catastrophic disaster continues to grow. I will tell you this, though. Every person in that Convention Center, we just learned about that today. And so, I have directed that we have all available resources to get to that Convention Center to make certain that they have the food and water, the medical care that they need...

ZAHN: Sir, you aren’t telling me...

BROWN: ...and that we take care of those bodies that are there.

ZAHN: Sir, you aren’t just telling me you just learned that the folks at the Convention Center didn’t have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?

Shepard Smith, on the scene for “The O’Reilly Factor,” was not the Shepard Smith Bill O’Reilly expected. Instead of focusing on lawless renegades, Smith, his voice cracked with sorrow and frustration, reported on the dead and dying around him and on the special treatment given to 700 guests and employees staying at a local Hilton Hotel who, without waiting in evacuation lines, had just been bused safely out of town with a National Guard escort. O’Reilly, taken aback by Smith’s newfound journalistic integrity, sneered: “You sound a little bitter, Shep.”

Though this was heartening to see the mainstream media actually doing their job, it must be noted that these journalists and their cohorts helped to create the conditions for this breakdown in government. When fixtures of our mainstream media don’t become outraged until we’re in the middle of a national disaster, made exponentially worse by an administration with a history of negligence - for which it is the media’s duty to watchdog - it is also too little, too late. The journalistic levees have long been broken in the United States.

Failure after failure, lie after lie, spin after spin, this administration has led our country lethally astray. But neither 9/11 lack of foresight nor the damning Downing Street Memo, neither the highly suspect 2004 election nor the ever-mounting soldier and civilian death tolls in Iraq, nor countless other abuses of power and instances of negligence were enough. Lifeless bodies floating down the bayou. Abandoned citizens dying of heat and dehydration and hunger. Motherless dead babies wrapped in sheets and resting in excrement. This is what it took the mainstream media to see the potential horrific effects of an incompetent White House. When the smell and sight of death was under their nose and in plain view. Suddenly, covering this government, at least for a moment, stopped feeling like a game. A passive pastime.

The Bush Administration has put into positions of power, under the watch of our mainstream media, dozens of people who are either unqualified, have a conflict of interest due to business associations, or have demonstrated abject incompetence over the last six years. Bush praises them uniformly – even awarding some, like former CIA Director George Tenet, the Medal of Honor - while people of character and clarity of mind, from Paul O’Neil to Richard Clarke to General Shinseki, have been fired for admirable service to their country. Throughout, the mainstream media has, by and large, allowed the swift-boating of national discourse to cloud the underlying message these men shared and believed was urgent enough to stake their livelihoods, their reputations and, quite possibly, their lives to share with everyone. Simply thus: The level of incompetence they witnessed in this administration, where decision-making processes depend more on ideology than fact, was a national security risk.

And so this was our line of defense when disaster struck: George was still on vacation; when compelled to act, his first move was to fly to San Diego to make a speech about staying the course in Iraq; acknowledging there was a national disaster a few days later, he compassionately flew over the Gulf Coast and then, like any leader in the face of crisis, turned in the opposite direction and flew back to the White House; then he praised the bungled efforts of his embattled FEMA Director and buddy: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” Meanwhile, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was yukking it up at “Spamalot” and shoe shopping in the Big Apple; Vice President Dick Cheney was MIA in Wyoming; and next in line to the Presidency, House Speaker Dennis Hastert was recommending we just bulldoze the rest of New Orleans. Feel better?

The next sweeping action? The Bush Administration went into full spin mode, leveling blame on citizens who “chose” not to evacuate, state and local officials, anyone who is not within their circle of criminal negligence. Spin they do swiftly, efficiently. Maybe because after so many blunders in office they’ve had ample time to hone their damage control skills. This is the CYA (Cover Your Ass) administration. The equivalence of the office employee who produces, if anything, shoddy work, but is adept at promoting the image of his value to the company. People once referred to such folks as bullshit artists. The difference is poor job performance and CYA mythmaking at the highest levels of government cost lives.

We already we saw the mainstream media falling back into line by the weekend. “Meet the Press” host Tim Russert ran with Karl Rove talking points when addressing Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard:

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Broussard, let me ask - I want to ask - should...

MR. BROUSSARD: You know, just some quick examples...

MR. RUSSERT: Hold on. Hold on, sir. Shouldn’t the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of New Orleans bear some responsibility? Couldn’t they have been much more forceful, much more effective and much more organized in evacuating the area?

MR. BROUSSARD: Sir, they were told like me, every single day, “The cavalry’s coming,” on a federal level, “The cavalry's coming, the cavalry’s coming, the cavalry’s coming.” I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry’s still not here yet, but I’ve begun to hear the hoofs, and we’re almost a week out.

Broussard, undeterred by Russert’s haranguing, went on to the story of one mother and son’s tragedy.

MR. BROUSSARD: The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, “Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?” And he said, “Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday. And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

At this point Broussard is in tears, and Russert, reluctantly, pulls back his carving utensils but manages to show little empathy.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody’s coming to get us. Nobody’s coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

MR. RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. President. While you gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi.

If we continue to lack a responsible mainstream media in this country, Katrina may very well turn out to be a glimpse into an even grimmer future. John F. Kennedy may have feared such a future when he said:

“There is a terrific disadvantage in not having the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily. Even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press.”