The Campaign to Save Bush's Butt

Dan Froomkin has the details in today's column.

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush's image.

My family's business is construction: my dad, my brother, my brother-in-law, my uncle, my late grandfather, even one of my sisters (who was more on the finance side) work in construction. I've brought my kids to tour my dad's jobs when they were smaller. Even on vacation, we were pointing out all my dad's company's projects as we drove around Hanover, NH.

And yet I'm expected to believe that Karl Rove is qualified to rebuild the Gulf Coast?! Un-be-liev-able.

Has BushCo learned nothing from the Michael Brown-FEMA fiasco? I guess not. Once again, it's party before people.

Froomkin isn't sure putting Rove in charge will work this time:

Rove has an astonishing track record of success. But at the same time, Bush finds himself today a deeply unpopular president according to the opinion polls, particularly damaged by his lackluster response to the protracted, televised suffering in New Orleans.

And Rove himself has not been at his best of late. Unlike many of Bush's advisers, who have plausible deniability for his initial under-reaction because they weren't with him on vacation, Rove was tagging along with the president, blithely touring the West Coast even as the Gulf Coast drowned. Rove is haunted by the possibility of indictment by a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent.

AMERICABlog makes this assessment: "Knowing Bush and Rove were together during the initial stages of the hurricane and its aftermath sure helps explain why the GOP doesn't want an independent commission."

(Hat tip to AMERICABlog.)