It Could Have Been Different, and It Doesn't Need to Remain the Way it is

It appears as though the credibility of this administration is at an all time low. Does anyone out there trust this adminstration any more? If so, why?

Slice:

The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.

The real tragedy of Katrina is that it could have been played differently, even if the force of the 'cane remained the same. While there is no shortage of blame to spread, and many fingers to point, what the country needs now are solutions.

Frank Rich hits the nail on the head, as usual, but we all could spend some energy thinking about how to help and prepare for disasters in our very own necks of the wood.

Slice:

As the levees cracked open and ushered hell into New Orleans on Tuesday, President Bush once again chose to fly away from Washington, not toward it, while disaster struck. We can all enumerate the many differences between a natural catastrophe and a terrorist attack. But character doesn't change: it is immutable, and it is destiny.

As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.