Answering 'couldbetrue' on the Bush legacy

Couldbetrue made some comments on the Moderates want competence" article, and I think answering the comment perception/meme here is worthwhile...

Couldbetrue: Katrina is a perfect example. Small government says you're on your own.

Actually, it does NOT say that. You are repeating a liberal Democrat strawman. "That government is best which governs least" by Thomas Jefferson, is not quite "That Goverment is least which doesn't govern at all." To be a small Government conservative is not to be against any government safety net, indeed that is usually how it is described. It also is to be FOR voluntary charity and encouraging efforts of community building.

So, what exactly is Katrina an 'example' of? Here in Texas, Katrina was an example of neighbor helping neighbor, both with government aid and with voluntary charity. We had people who were taken in at numerous place, and volunteers and state and local Governments, from Gov Rick Perry on down to our Austin Mayor, and people in Austin and other cities who helped give a place to live for a while to people who had become homeless by the flooding in New Orleans. My wife helped a refugee get around town and go shopping.

In New Orleans, Katrina was an example of the incompetence of the local Democrats who ran New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. Nagin packed 20,000 into a superdome and gave them food for 24 hours, and they were stuck there for 4 days. He failed to order the evacuation in time, even though President Bush called him prior to insist on doing it. Not more than 1/4 mile from the superdome was a fleet of schoolbuses to be used for evacuation purposes. They were left there, underwater, even though it would have been easy to take them to high ground and use them for evacuation. Governor Blanco dithered rather than call out the national guard immediately to stop looting and disorder in New Orleans. Meanwhile, the military that Bush ordered out rescued many hundreds from rooftops. And FEMA became the scapegoat for the failures of Nagin and Blanco, even though in dozens of other disasters like this, FEMA was no slower and no faster in response; in any disaster, it takes time for FEMA to respond and they say that local and personal means are needed in the first 1-3 days.

So Katrina was also an example of Democrats scapegoating the Federal Government and Bush for failures at more local Government. The contrast with Mississippi is telling. There was no scapegoating there, even though the devastation was severe. There was no scapegoating of FEMA in Ike, even though Galveston was hit terribly by it. There was no scapegoatig of FEMA in Rita, etc. You get the picture. Katrina is a special case because ... New Orleans is a basket case and Democrats wanted to hurt Bush so they shifted blame. An example of a city that has absorbed the wrong lessons of how to be. Instead of self-reliant, they were and are dependent on others; instead of responsible, they expect others to shoulder their burdens. As a result, they will blame others when they make a mistake.

To me, Katrina is an example of the futility of dependence and the folly of thinking the Federal Government is the right solution for every problem. It is not.

Conservatism says that Government is best when it is closest to the people. The highest form of Government is self-Government, and that is called individual responsibility and self-reliance. The next highest form of Government are those voluntary institutions, the family, the church, and neighbor helping neighbor, that makes life work on a personal level. Beyond that, the local community, then the state, and the Federal Government. As Government gets more remote, it is more prone to error and unresponsiveness.

We shouldn't act surprised if FEMA cannot act swiftly to a sudden threat of the worst hurricane in 100 years. Self-reliant individuals who are alerted can do far more to protect themselves and will weather a storm like that far better than people with a dependency attitude that wait for the Federal Government to save them.

Most Americans were appalled at Bush's 'incompetent. i.e. principled' lack of action.

Most Americans were lied to by a biased media then, because that description is complete fiction. First, Bush had and has FEMA and Dept of Homeland Security to address these issues. There was PLENTY of action. The record of action and the policy is clear that they DO act. And in Katrina, they did act, as well as an bureaucratic organization could.

Who didnt act appropriately? Governor Blanco:
http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=news&file=article&sid=367

Now Governor Blanco also made major mistakes. After asking and getting the federal government to declare the hurricane zone a disaster area two days before the storm hit, the governor failed to send any National Guard troops in to secure New Orleans and the surrounding parishes before the storm. Why?
She also failed to ask for more troops from the feds, knowing she only had about 6,000 to control the city of 1.3 million. Why not ask for more?
Like the mayor, Governor Blanco has no explanation. Surely she knew the potential for chaos. Why not send the Guard in immediately?
Then when the levees were breached, the Guard found itself unable to get into New Orleans. They're outside. It was not until Wednesday, August 31st, three days after the storm hit, that Blanco admitted she didn't have enough security in the city.
What Really Happened in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina? Bill O'Reilly, Fox News; Wednesday, September 07, 2005.

The biased liberal media has made mountains of criticism out of molehills of errors on Bush's part in katrina, but if you look carefully, you will find that even the people of New Orleans knew better who really screwed up:
http://www.newsbusters.org/node/1201

ABC News producers probably didn't hear what they expected when they sent Dean Reynolds to the Houston Astrodome's parking lot to get reaction to President Bush's speech from black evacuees from New Orleans. Instead of denouncing Bush and blaming him for their plight, they praised Bush and blamed local officials. Reynolds asked Connie London: "Did you harbor any anger toward the President because of the slow federal response?" She rejected the premise: "No, none whatsoever, because I feel like our city and our state government should have been there before the federal government was called in.” She pointed out: “They had RTA buses, Greyhound buses, school buses, that was just sitting there going under water when they could have been evacuating people."

Not one of the six people interviewed on camera had a bad word for Bush -- despite Reynolds' best efforts. Reynolds goaded: "Was there anything that you found hard to believe that he said, that you thought, well, that's nice rhetoric, but, you know, the proof is in the pudding?" Brenda Marshall answered, "No, I didn't," prompting Reynolds to marvel to anchor Ted Koppel: "Very little skepticism here.”

Reynolds pressed another woman: “Did you feel that the President was sincere tonight?" She affirmed: "Yes, he was." Reynolds soon wondered who they held culpable for the levee breaks. Unlike the national media, London did not blame supposed Bush-mandated budget cuts: "They've been allocated federal funds to fix the levee system, and it never got done. I fault the mayor of our city personally. I really do."

Deregulation is another example showing corporate greed triumphs over all including their own companies' sustainability. Massive pollution is a by product that hurts even CEO's grandchildren.

Nice talking point, that's a rather bizarre assertion given that there hasn't been deregulation at all in the environmental area, and that 'massive pollution' is something that is not happening today.

Facts Not Fear on Air Pollution: (PDF) Air pollution of all kinds declined sharply because of cleaner motor vehicles, ... us worse off. Myth No. 1: Air Quality. Is Bad and Getting Worse

Air pollution has been declining for decades across the United States, yet most Americans still
believe air pollution is a growing problem and a serious threat to their health. The reason: most information on air pollution from environmentalists, regulators and journalists — the public’s main sources for information on the environment — is false. Air quality in America’s cities is better than ever.

Couldbetrue: You should be as offended about being lied to by people fearmongering over exaggerated environmental threats as you probably are offended over the CIA's "slam dunk" mistake on Saddam's WMDs. They are preying upon your fears.

Bush's use of force as his first and last choice for diplomacy exposes another failure of principle in the real world.

This is yet another strawman. We have tried diplomacy in Iran wrt nukes, in the Israel-Palestine conflict (for 35 years!), and have jawboned Russia over Georgia.

Norquist's view of small government has been exposed as a failure, as has Cheney's Neocon view along with business run wild.

The conservatives would argue - correctly - that Bush has been a Big Government conservative. So where oh where have we actually TRIED 'small government' lately. When Bill Clinton said in 1995, 'the era of Big Government is over', we actually had a government that in nominal terms spent half of what it is spending now. Let's not forget that we had the largest entitlement expansion, the Medicare drug benefit which passed in 2003, and this year the Pelosi Congress has gone on a bailout spree to the tune of $1 trillion, the wall st TARP bailout, the housing bailout ($300 billion), covering the Fannie Mae mortgages ($200 billion), economic 'stimulus' checks. And so it goes. The era of small government never happened!

Likewise, the business run amok comment doesnt match reality. The Sarbanes-Oxley bill in 2002 increased financial regulation of business firms, and there was no serious deregulation of business in recent years.

Going down the religious trail had short term wins Tuesday, but mixing religion and government is a long term losing strategy, too.

Nobody is more in favor of true religious liberty and the first amendment freedom to worship rights than the Christian Right. We don't want government meddling in religion. The Christians just want to be left alone to practice and live their faith openly, and not have to have their own children indoctrinated into the secular humanist religion in public schools.

For some values issues, it is a mistake to confuse the legitimate desires to have traditional moral and cultural values expressed as 'mixing religion and government'. It is not inappropriate to infuse your religiously derived values in laws, so long as those values are not forcing sectarianism on others. Rev MLK was a preacher, should he have stayed home instead of pushing for civil rights, which to him was a religious issue? Or was the religiously derived abolition movement wrong? The anti-abortion and other values movements are no different. They are taking the faith's concerns for a segment of humanity (ie the unborn) and pushing for the recognition of rights of that segment of humanity. It was justice in civil rights movement and it is justice here as well.

I would love to see your party rebuild. But, you need to offer something that works.

I am a conservative precisely because I know FREEDOM WORKS. The truth that freedom works is why I use the handle FreedomsTruth, as truth and freedom are my core political values. I understand that others don't have that core commitment or understanding, due to either not understanding or studying it from my perspective, or simply letting other (false) ideological perception cloud their vision. So my task, if I want others to see things my way, is to bring out those facts that confirm that indeed, freedom does work. In other words, pragmatic validators lead those non-conservatives to wake up and go "Oh yeah, maybe there is something to that." Example: I can show how low tax rate countries with smaller governments have higher growth, by pointing out the case of Ireland, which became the 'celtic tiger' due to a program of lower tax rates.

When it comes to 'truth', there is a point at which you do have to discard ideology and look at ''what works" and "what happened". I've blogged that Bush's failures, both real and perceived, are responsible for our loss. I've noted that on Katrina, it was a lot more perception than reality. So on that, and on some other minor items, it was Bush's PR efforts that were mediocre (e.g., that terrible press secretary Scottie McClellan). On other issues, like spending, Bush was not a small Government conservative; he spent at a relatively high rate. We are close to $3 trillion dollars a year away from "you're on your own." On Iraq, there were mistakes and errors, which in my mind were due to execution, e.g., two big mistakes of disbanding the Iraqi army and keeping troop levels too low in 2003-2006. None of these and few of Bush's controversial decisions were philosophically conservatives. His appointments of Roberts and Alito were conservative bright spots, and both were among his best appointments.

I never thought the immigration amnesty would "work" except to incite more illegal immigration; I don't think the TARP bailout will 'work' except to suck the financial sector into the Federal Government and socialize and weaken that industry; and I dont think bailouts without end will work.

So to summarize a long post: Despite your comments, I stand by my statement that the failures of the Bush administration were mostly non-ideological and were not failures of conservatism at all. Still, whatever the causes and excuses for it, Bush's low performance ratings harmed conservatism and Republican party in this election. Them's the breaks when our guy underperforms and it is our job to convince people we won't fail on the competence issue next time. The irony is this: Obama promises change, but you will see that he is actually more of the same - more of the Big Government spending that has been accelerating in the past two years.