On Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:30:38 GMT, john smith wrote in
::

One persons historical perspective...


Katrina’s worst damage will take the form of recriminations
Friday, September 02, 2005
DAVID BROOKS


Hurricanes come in ...

Interesting.

David Brooks was full of recrimination for baby Bush on the News Hour
with Jim Lehrer:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/polit..._9-2.htmlDAVID

BROOKS: This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see
bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But
second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of
institutions.

Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the
first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure
of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate
scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of
scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling
the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must
say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the
70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's
get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a
cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of
it.

....

DAVID BROOKS: But to reiterate the point I made earlier, which is this
is the anti-9/11, just in terms of public confidence, when 9/11
happened Giuliani was right there and just as a public presence,
forceful -- no public presence like that now. So you have had a surge
of strength, people felt good about the country even though we had
been hit on 9/11.

Now we've been hit again in a different way; people feel lousy; people
feel ashamed and part of that is because of the public presentation.
In part that is because of the failure of Bush to understand
immediately the shame people felt.

Sitting up there on the airplane and looking out the window was
terrible. And the three days of doing nothing, really, on Bush was
terrible. And even today, I found myself, as you know, I support his
politics quite often.

DAVID BROOKS: Look at him today earlier in the program, this is how
Mark Shields must feel looking at him, I'm angry at the guy and maybe
it will pass for me. But a lot of people and a lot of Republicans are
furious right now.