The Post-Katrina Presidency

By giving last night's speech, George Bush reinvented his presidency for a second time and in a way that has much deeper implications. The first time came on 9/11 when events compelled him to recognize that international terrorism was a greater foreign policy concern than ballistic missile defense or China. His response was to reorganize US foreign policy priorities, not to reimagine the role of the federal government, which he already assumed needed to have a strong military and an effective intelligence community. The catastrophe in New Orleans, on the other hand, has forced President Bush to speak of urban poverty and racial discrimination. He certainly used those words before but probably not in the same sentence and I'd bet never as President. Not since Bob Dole's running mate Jack Kemp has a Republican leader echoed the words of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Kemp did not believe in all of Sargent Shriver's programs but he shared a passion for resolving the problem of urban poverty. The plight of New Orleans has not only put that problem squarely on the national agenda again but a US president has decided to let his leadership be judged by how well he handles this challenge. This is not how George W. Bush expected his presidency to be judged.

Leaving aside the usual caution about believing presidential rhetoric, there are some inescapable consequences to what Bush said last night. He promised that the federal government would make a city better; not just rebuild it but correct previous wrongs. Even if he fails in New Orleans, has he not opened the door to other cities to ask for federal assistance to try to improve the lives of their urban poor? Bush may try to argue that New Orleans is a special case because of Katrina but why should it become a model city to the exclusion of Detroit or Newark?

The fact of the matter is that Bush's promise last night overturns his previous rhetoric of providing opportunity through private charity and small government. On September 1, while many residents of New Orleans were still days away from being rescued, he wanly offered a private sector response to the problem of rebuilding the Gulf Coast and enlisted his father and Clinton to pass the hat for him. Now he is turning to the ghost of Lyndon Johnson and the federal government to do most of the work.

If the Democratic party has any guts, it will applaud this new initiative, embrace it as a coming home of sorts by Americans who had forgotten that on the big problems government can be the solution not the problem, and take stock of the ideas that it still has kicking around to create urban opportunity. Not all of the ideas behind the War on Poverty worked, but they did not all fail either. The modern Republican party has little experience of mounting a reconstruction and, with the Kemp exception, could use some ideas.