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Jewish World Review Sept 9, 2005 / 5 Elul, 5765 Stop the arguing and start the action By Tony Snow
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Hurricane Katrina not only covered New
Orleans in toxic goo, it also flushed out a large, vocal and potentially
pestilential cadre of First Over-Responders.
Rep. Bob Wexler set the stage just minutes after the first levee
burst by accusing President Bush of gross incompetence. Rep. Harold Ford
followed shortly after with an artless race-card play, wondering aloud why
so many people of color had been stranded.
In time, virtually every Democratic panjandrum found some novel
way to politicize the Atlantic typhoon. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
inveigled against the evils of Big Oil. Sen. Edward Kennedy suggested
holding a forum on New Orleans' racial and economic tensions — during John
Roberts' Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
There was talk of shutting off future tax cuts, spending
hundreds of billions of dollars, firing Federal Emergency Management Agency
Director Michael Brown, recalling all National Guard units from Iraq and
revamping the federal government's plans for dealing with terrorist attacks.
Opinions wildly outnumbered facts among the Over-Responders. At
one point, Randall Robinson alleged that locals were cannibalizing the
bloated and blistered bodies of the city's dead, while rap star Kanye West
repeated the urban legend that black looters were described as "looters,"
while whites were designated as "survivors."
Military expert Celine Dion, seconded by Michael Moore, alleged
that the Pentagon had failed to dispatch helicopters to the scene (the
helicopters arrived within hours of the hurricane's making landfall).
The three most popular tropes claimed insanely that the 60,000
or so people dispatched by the federal government to lend aid, along with
thousands of private citizens who flocked to the Gulf Coast to offer aid and
succor, were guided by racist impulses; that they sought only to help
affluent whites, leaving the poor (especially blacks) to fend for themselves
in the nightmare world of New Orleans; and that George W. Bush was
responsible for this explosion of physical and spiritual misery.
These claims, aided by an onslaught of anti-Bush press accounts,
failed utterly. A paltry 13 percent of the public believes the president
deserves blame for the mess. Nearly two-thirds of those responding to a
CNN-Gallup poll said the administration shouldn't fire anybody — presumably
because mere mortals ought not to take the blame for hurricanes.
Let's face it, the political left — aided and abetted by Pat
Buchanan and members of the bed-wetting right — made utter fools of
themselves. Fortunately, the American public showed a surer sense of
proportion and a greater knack for leadership.
While powerless politicians thundered, the public took action.
Families packed up goods and shipped them to the Gulf Coast. Houses of
worship organized fund-raisers. Truckers suspended normal business and
headed to the region, offering to transport goods or people. Individual
charitable donations exceeded $500 million in the week after the hurricane
ripped into Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
As if to demonstrate the nonpartisan nature of human decency,
Albert Gore Jr., once an almost-president, sent a bus south and brought it
back with a load of evacuees, upon whom he and others lavished some
old-fashioned Southern hospitality. Meanwhile, fellow Tennessean Bill Frist
rolled up his sleeves and delivered free medical care to the sick and
wounded.
A friend of mine rented some helicopters and, with the approval
of state and federal authorities, launched a series of operations to rescue
stranded civilians and deliver humanitarian supplies to squatters trying to
stay within the city.
These people, and thousands more like them, didn't wait to fill
out forms or organize press conferences. They headed to the scene and asked
to help. In so doing, they — not the political yobbos — set the tone for
post-Katrina America.
We Americans always have measured ourselves by three things: our
resilience, our ambition and our determination to do the right thing. Every
unexpected setback calls forth strengths and virtues latent in the national
character — special skills we never dreamed would lie within us.
When bad times come, we tell ourselves we can create good times.
That's why nobody will care a year from now what House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi had to say this week. She offered nothing constructive.
Instead, in the manner of New Yorkers after Sept. 11, the folks
who form our national heart and soul will bury the dead, care for the living
and build upon ruined soil the foundations of a revived civilization —
chastened by the big storm, educated by the failures of a culture that
spawned looters and cheats, and inspired by the opportunity to say to the
large and deadly storm, "Nice try, but you picked on the wrong country."
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Comment on JWR contributor, and syndicated talk show host, Tony Snow's column by clicking here. © 2005, Creators Syndicate, Inc |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
