Being one of nature's more vicious storms, hurricanes are typically defined by adjectives like violent. Ferocious. Deadly.
This week, the Republican Party added a brand new descriptive: convenient.
Guided by forces from above and steered by the prayers of GOP strategists, Hurricane Gustav pulled away from Havana and bore down on New Orleans. The same New Orleans that, exactly three years ago to the day, succumbed to the catastrophic cat-five winds of Katrina. The same New Orleans that slowly drowned while the lifeguard on duty, President George W. Bush, snoozed away in his tall white chair. The same New Orleans whose cries Bush tuned out as he flew from his vacation retreat in Crawford, Texas, to Arizona and then California. Yep, that one.
W had to have noticed the flailing arms of the city's rooftop-bound residents during the infamous "fly-by" portion of his return trip to Washington. Amid the worst natural disaster in our nation's history, the water-bound communities treaded water for four full days before Air Force One reappeared and actually deployed its landing gear. The people of these proud neighborhoods continued bailing, praying and looking for loved ones, waiting for the president to make his first public speech to a concerned nation on behalf of Katrina's tens of thousands of victims. He did get around to the task-- it just took him till halfway through the following month to do so.
You know, when it was convenient.
Bush had learned from his heartlessness. Should our country ever face another natural disaster, he had something to prove. An outstanding debt he owed the citizenry and, more importantly, his legacy. Three years later, as the final year of his reign rolled along, manifold challenges awaited his Grand Old Party. The nominee, Arizona senator John McCain, was being portrayed as W's political siamese twin, retroactively conjoined by Barack Obama and fellow Democrats during the previous week's Democratic National Convention in Denver. McCain's voting history, 90% in lock-step with W's, is a matter of record.
So how can the Republican nominee avoid the party's abyssmal track record over the last eight years of leadership? How can he distance himself from a president with the lowest approval rating in our nation's history? And how can the party who took over the Oval Office in 2000 with a budgetary surplus and proceeded to transform it into our largest deficit ever, run--literally--away from its indelible past and toward another four years of power?
Shhh! Wait--can you hear that rain comin' down?
Fast as you could say "weather channel", Gustav had Bourbon Street in its cross-hairs. And Bush packing for a flight south, ostensibly a mission of atonement to the soon-to-be hurricane-ravaged Gulf regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and East Texas. The weekend before the RNC, two days before he was to stand at the podium and shower praise upon his long-time friend and colleague, W scheduled a hasty press conference to announce that nature's agenda was far more critical than his, and far too important for him to blow off this time around. To make sure his commitment was clear, he said he must regrettably stay away from Minneapolis for the entire week. Too many people would need his assistance someplace else. No way can he afford to stand next to McCain now; not while the potential for a massive hurricane was this close, this real. No, this was a situation far too... convenient.
Thus continued one of the more surreal weeks of our two-century-long political existence. After the first African American nominee gave his historic acceptance speech before seventy-five thousand people on the home field of the Denver Broncos; after McCain announced his historic--and altogether unknown--running mate hours later; the sitting two-term president elected to forego his party's entire national convention. Even he knew the cancer that was he himself. Exit, plane left.
Did it matter that Gustav had been downgraded to a low category-two storm when it ran aground 100 miles west of New Orleans? Did it matter that there was only minimal damage and negligible loss of life? Did it matter to the thousands who perished as a result of the hoof-dragging and finger-pointing Katrina response, or the many thousands who loved them, that W was on-site and on call, ready at the helm this time around?
Did it even matter to Mr. Bush himself that his efforts appeared fruitless? No, not one bit. Because they weren't. In fact, he did more than Republicans could have ever wished for. The man is so unpopular that the biggest contribution he can make to his party is to make himself disappear. The man the Dems couldn't beat with a majority of the popular vote the first time (in 2000) and with virtually 50% of the vote the second time (in 2004), encouraged to "make like a tree" by the very people that helped lift him over the edge in both elections.
Not only was Bush aware of this horrible truth; he was actually cool with it. And the McCain-loving media was cool right back, barely mentioning the obvious attempt to hoodwink the nation with this stunt.
Every time you think to yourself, there's no WAY the Republican party can pull this off, you get more convinced that maybe just maybe, they already have.
