The conventional wisdom says everything changed with Katrina. The hurricane destroyed the Bush administration's claims to competence and exploded Bush's own re-election message that Americans would be safer with him in the White House. It demoralised Republicans and reopened America's racial wounds in a way that provoked an outraged Colin Powell out of retirement. It invigorated the Democrats and enticed last year's vice-presidential candidate John Edwards back to the fray with his claim that Bush was producing "Two Americas—separate and unequal." It brought Hillary Clinton (and her husband) back on to the national stage. Even Bill Kristol, high priest of the neocons, was infected with the bug of Clintonostalgia, conceding, "I think the Clinton administration would have done a better job in handling Hurricane Katrina."
But the smart money in Washington has now got over the shock and concludes that nothing much has changed. The president's approval ratings are around 40 per cent, still short of the nadirs of Clinton or the elder Bush. The Republicans have closed ranks, while the Democrats are arguing about whether to strengthen or weaken Bush's new department of homeland security, and trying to defend the behaviour of the Democratic mayor of New Orleans and governor of the state of Louisiana. And now all the news is upbeat and positive about rescues and pumping out the city, and the White House trumpeting of the $51.8bn reconstruction bill that went from draft to Bush's signature in 16 hours flat. Karl Rove might just get away with it, controlling the tight script that had White House press secretary Scott McClellan saying 15 times in one briefing that there should be no "blame game." Except by Republican partisans.
Well oiled
The blame game does not yet seem to have caught up with the people who should have the strongest interest in ensuring that the port and infrastructure of New Orleans are secure—big oil. Since Bush took over the White House in January 2001, the big five oil petrol sellers in the US have boasted total profits of $254bn—ExxonMobil: $89bn, Shell: $60.7bn, BP: $53bn, ChevronTexaco: $31bn, ConocoPhillips: $20bn. The consumer watchdog group Public Citizen reports that the profit margin of US oil refiners leaped by an impressive 79 per cent between 1999 (when Exxon and Mobil merged) and 2004. Oh yes, and oil and utility companies spent $367m over the last two years pushing congress to pass energy legislation. That generosity led to the best return on investment any industry could hope for —the energy bill that Bush signed into law this summer, which gives the oil and gas industry some $14.5bn in subsidies and tax breaks over the next decade.
Barbour's hour of glory
The hurricane has created two strong favourites for the Republican succession in 2008: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani as the strong man who saved Manhattan after 9/11, and Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, a former Republican national committee chairman who did just about everything right in his state while his counterpart in Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, did most things wrong. Above all, Barbour called in the military early: its Northern Command had been put on alert for a week before Katrina hit and had combat engineers, food and medical supplies stocked ready at the bases in Meridien, Mississippi and Barksdale, Louisiana. Barbour, whose legendary memory for bawdy jokes helped to get him the job as political director in the Reagan White House, has been getting standing ovations in his post-disaster tours of Mississippi for saying his call to the Pentagon was "the best decision I ever took." The US coast guard saved 1,700 Mississippians on the night Katrina hit.
The White House vs McCain
Politics, of course, has been continuing as usual, particularly the relentless White House campaign to stop Senator John McCain in 2008. McCain squeezed an amendment on to the defence funding bill that would have required all detainees in American hands to be registered with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and treated according to the rules of the US army field manual, which forbids cruel, degrading, or inhumane treatment. It's not about who "they" are, McCain insists. "It's about who we are as Americans." Bush sent Dick Cheney up to the Senate to threaten a veto of the entire bill unless the McCain amendment was cut.
Wilkerson walks the line
Keep an eye on Colin Powell, whose patience as a loyal soldier seems to be running out. Powell's devoted chief of staff at the state department (and his chief aide when Powell was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff at the Pentagon) was Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a thinking soldier and former head of the Marine Corps war college. Wilkerson does nothing without checking with Powell first. It was Wilkerson whose testimony stopped the Senate from confirming John Bolton as ambassador to the UN, forcing Bush to give Bolton a temporary "recess" appointment. At a big two-day conference on "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose," Wilkerson stunned the audience by charging that decision-making in national security issues at the White House was "broken and mired in bureaucracy. Whether we can get this right is the big question of our times," Wilkerson said. "If we get it wrong—well, empires have disappeared before."
