The New York Times:
The speech, as good as it was, marks only a moment of clarity. Mr. Bush’s problem in dealing with Katrina has been, at bottom, the same one that has bedeviled the administration since 9/11. The president came to office with a deep antipathy toward big government that has turned out to be utterly inappropriate for the world he inherited. The result has not been less government, but it has definitely been inept government.
We have already seen what happened to the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it was taken over by an administration that didn’t like large federal agencies with sweeping mandates. For Iraq, the White House asserted that open-ended and no-bid contracts doled out to big corporations run by people known to government officials would mean swifter, more efficient operations. What we got was gross inefficiency, which has run up costs while failing in many cases to do the jobs required.
Given this history, it’s impossible not to worry about what will happen to the billions of dollars being committed to New Orleans, especially since the Army Corps of Engineers’ top man in the reclamation effort was once the corps’ top man overseeing contracts in Iraq.
“As good as it was”? Were we watching the same speech?
UPDATE: Even the Republicans are worried about the money.
“The speech, as good as it was?”
Might have been a typo. Maybe he meant to say “The speech was as good as we’re going to get.”
When thinking of this reconstruction effort, Teapot Dome comes to mind.
They meant he was better than during the first debates with Gore/Kerry and, oh yeah, Karl Rove has been given more power!!!