Will History Repeat Itself?

In the great flood of 1927, the upper crust of New Orleans tried to save the city by breaking the levees and flooding the land of poor farmers who lived farther up the Mississippi River. But even among those poor victims, blacks were treated worse than whites. John Barry, author of Rising Tide, an account of that flood, argues that the political reaction to that flood and its aftermath boosted the populist politics of Huey Long. Barry writes that the flood made clear the value of the federal government, even in disasters that had been treated purely as a local responsibility, and thus helped build popular support for the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt.

Will the 2005 flood of New Orleans have a similar effect? It would be a fair turnabout for a president who has been determined to roll back every vestige of the New Deal. Indeed, the public has been overwhelmingly critical of the government’s failure to protect the people of New Orleans before and after Katrina, and there is a national sense of shame at how the victims were so disproportionately poor and black.

By large margins, polls show Americans think the government failed in its responsibilities. But Bush himself may still get off the hook. An ABC poll showed only 44 percent blame Bush for the failure, with opinion splitting sharply along partisan lines. At the same time, public opinion ratings of Bush’s performance were already plummeting before the disaster, especially regarding the war in Iraq. Prospects for Republican proposals in Congress and the mid-term elections next year are beginning to look less secure.

Despite dogged declarations that they will carry on with their agenda, the White House and Republican leaders are on the defensive. With national attention focused on inadequate public investment to protect New Orleans – and with America’s stark life-and-death inequalities projected on the nation’s television screens – even Republican leaders decided that this might not be the best time to push for the total repeal of the estate tax, as they had previously planned. 

Democrats have stressed the incompetence and cronyism of the administration’s relief efforts under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – led by Michael Brown, a man whose main qualification for the position, other than being a friend of a friend of Bush, was a disastrous, scandal-plagued term as head of the International Arabian Horse Association. In the initial aftermath of Katrina he tried to channel citizen contributions to flood victims through a front group of the right-wing preacher, Pat Robertson.

But Bill Clinton has willingly stepped in to moderate critiques of Bush, and few Democrats have drawn out the long-term political implications of the New Orleans disaster. While the immediate focus is quite appropriately on caring for the victims, the catastrophe visited upon them was as much social as it was natural. It will compound the horror if the underlying social disaster were ignored.

There are at least four ways in which the New Orleans flood is a rebuke to the fundamental values of the Bush administration, even if the problems have been developing over many decades, often with the complicity of Democratic politicians. First, the hurricane evacuation efforts, which barely took into account those who couldn’t afford automobiles, showed how little attention officials pay to the poor and their needs. Then the pathetic initial relief efforts underscored this neglect, with refugees waiting in squalor as Bush played golf and Condoleezza Rice went on a shopping spree for fancy shoes. But even as they tried to recover politically, the Bush crowd showed their insensitivity: Bush commiserating with Sen. Trent Lott about his lost beachfront mansion and commending his FEMA chief (“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job”), and matriarch Barbara Bush opining that life in the Houston Astrodome really wasn’t so bad for the flood refugees, since they’d been underprivileged before the flood. 

Indeed, the main problem was not the class-biased emergency response and relief, but rather the degree of poverty and inequality in the country – growing under the Bush administration – and the general lack of solidarity with low-income working Americans. As the disaster unfolded, new census figures tell a story of worsening conditions for most Americans even as the economy recovers. While productivity has risen steadily since 2000, real median household incomes have slowly but surely declined. From 2003 to 2004, the richest 5 percent saw their real income rise by 1.7 percent. For the remaining 95 percent of Americans, real income fell or stayed flat. Poverty is up (and nearly 30 percent of American families, more than three times the poverty rate, do not earn enough to pay for a modest, basic family budget, according to the Economic Policy Institute). Employer-provided health insurance is down (with Medicaid and other federal programs, now under assault by Bush and Republicans in Congress, taking up part of the slack). By virtually all measurements, this recovery has been much weaker for most working Americans than previous ones.

That’s partly the result of Bush’s failed economic policy of pushing huge tax cuts for the rich as a stimulus package, instead of pumping up incomes of the less affluent – like the victims in New Orleans – or making public investments in crucial infrastructure – like bolstering New Orleans’ flood defense. New Orleans was also the victim of a prolonged failure of the federal government to adopt and fund a serious strategy for revitalizing urban centers. Now, if money is found to rebuild New Orleans, the odds are high that it will favor corporate tourism and upper middle-income housing. It is doubtful that it will provide opportunities for those who previously lived there and help retain the vitality of its unique culture.

Overall, the New Orleans flood has once again made people conscious of the importance of the federal government, directly repudiating the Bush administration drive to minimize the federal role, even in disaster planning (for example, dismissing FEMA payouts as wasteful government pork barrel spending). Beyond the question of the size and function of the federal government, there’s a far more serious shortcoming in the Bush stewardship: The government should provide a long-term perspective on social solidarity, economic sustainability and security to counterbalance the short-term greed that drives the marketplace. Yet there’s no evidence of such planning in the Bush administration, which pursues policies that put short-term goals favorable to the rich above everything else. Even under Clinton, disasters determined – and made politically possible – much of the administration’s urban and public investment policy, which ideally should aim to prevent both social and natural disasters as much as possible.

For Bush, government does have a role in providing security, but only in the ​“war on terror,” and there it’s a misguided role. The flooding of New Orleans was a reminder of how threats to security go far beyond the possibility of Islamist (or other) terrorists blowing up buildings. Indeed, the war in Iraq, which is arguably increasing the terrorist threat to the United States, deprived the country of both money and manpower that might have been deployed to protect people on the Gulf Coast. And security at home ultimately depends as well on social solidarity, including reduced inequality and improved economic security. With disillusionment about the war rising, the renewed focus on security closer to home highlights more failings of the Bush administration and opens the door for a new politics of security.

And on that count, the New Orleans disaster is also a reminder of Bush’s failure to promote serious energy efficiency and alternatives, as well as his refusal to acknowledge the threat of global warming. The hurricane’s disruption of an already tight oil market will slow the economy and pinch many workers’ standard of living, but even in the near term, dependence on oil creates serious economic and geopolitical insecurity. It also contributes to global warming. In a study published in July in Nature, global warming was identified as a cause of the more intense tropical storms, such as Katrina, in the Caribbean. The study also noted it could eventually cause flooding around the world on a much grander scale than in New Orleans. And the long-term failure to protect the ecosystem of the Mississippi river, its delta and the barrier islands – which Bush continued and worsened with his reduced protection of wetlands – intensified the destruction from the hurricane.

The crisis wrought by Katrina, deepened and shaped by the policies of a government that neglected long-term needs (especially those of the poor), could help shift the balance of politics. The crisis could focus a new attention on inequality, bring about a respect for the role of government, and create a demand for realistic security. It could also spur a more serious approach to climate change, environmental degradation and an unsustainable energy policy. Something similar happened more than 70 years ago after another flood. But it will require the political equivalent of an FDR to take advantage of that potential shift and create a movement that responds to it. So far, no one has stepped up.