Challenges to Bush leadership mount as poll numbers slide

by Brian Knowlton

President George W. Bush faced increasingly bitter political challenges Sunday from local and state officials in the battered Gulf Coast as he struggled to show mastery over a disaster that his administration now acknowledges almost surely claimed thousands of lives and had yet to bare its full, ugly toll.

A Louisiana senator, Mary Landrieu, said she was so angry about federal failures and second-guessing that if she heard any more criticism, even from the president, she might "punch" him.

The New Orleans mayor, C. Ray Nagin, said matters were improving but remained a "disgrace."

The president of a local parish, or municipal district, Aaron Broussard, broke down sobbing on television as he talked about an elderly woman who drowned while awaiting repeatedly promised help.

"Nobody’s coming to get us," Broussard said, his head sagging. "The secretary has promised. Everybody’s promised. They’ve had press conferences. I’m sick of the press conferences. For God’s sake, shut up and send us somebody."

Bush, criticized even by some supporters for failing to respond more decisively, ordered additional troops to the region and sent top cabinet members there to help guide still-unfinished rescue work.

He dropped his own plans for Labor Day on Monday, saying he would return to Louisiana and Mississippi, and overhauled his month’s schedule, canceling a long-anticipated meeting with President Hu Jintao of China.

White House advisers scrambled to confront a confluence of critical developments - including the hurricane, sagging support for the Iraq war and record-high gas prices - that politicians say could severely challenge his second-term legislative plans.

The politics of an already charged season appeared suddenly overshadowed by the depths of the hurricane drama.

The first major opinion poll since the disaster showed ambivalent feelings toward Bush’s handling of it, far less positive than the near-universal support he received in the days after the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. An ABC poll found that 46 percent of Americans approved of Bush’s handling of the hurricane crisis, almost exactly half his 91 percent approval rating after Sept. 11.

Bush sent several top advisers to the region, including Michael Chertoff, head of the department of homeland security, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, as federal and state authorities reportedly wrestled behind the scenes over who had ultimate authority in the crisis area.

Chertoff’s department has been harshly criticized for the federal failure to prepare for a possible disaster that some emergency officials, and the New Orleans newspaper, anticipated with eerie precision years ago.

Chertoff in turn seemed to cast some blame elsewhere, saying earlier that "our constitutional system really places the primary authority in each state with the governor."

Landrieu, a Democratic senator whose father, Moon Landrieu, was once New Orleans mayor, on Sunday dropped her earlier reserve about federal failings.

Bush said last week that the crisis was so enormous that it had "strained state and local capabilities," a comment local authorities took as a deeply unjustified criticism.

A distraught Landrieu said that if she heard any more criticism from federal officials, particularly about the evacuation of New Orleans, she might lose control. "If one person criticizes them or says one more thing - including the president of the United States - he will hear from me," she said.

"One more word about it after this show airs and I might likely have to punch him. Literally."

Chertoff warned that Americans, already horrified by scenes of misery and chaos in New Orleans, should brace for worse.

"I think we need to prepare the country for what’s coming," he said on television. As waters recede, "we’re going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, you know, got caught by the flood, people whose remains are going to be found in the streets.

"It’s going to be about as ugly a scene as I think you can imagine. Certainly as ugly of a scene as we’ve seen in this country, with the possible exception of 9/11."

Nagin, the mayor who last week lashed out at federal authorities in an expletive-laced outburst, told reporters Saturday that while he regretted his language, he was still frustrated by the federal response.

"We’re still fighting over authority," he said. "A bunch of people are the boss. The state and the federal government are doing a two-step dance. I think it’s getting better, but the pace is still not sufficient."

In Washington, even some Republicans have warned that the much-assailed White House response could undermine Bush’s authority and his legislative agenda, including plans to overhaul the tax code, Social Security and immigration law.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said that Bush’s handling of the crisis could, if it is seen to improve, re-energize his plans.

Otherwise, "it swamps the rest of his agenda." But the government message has found itself struggling for time on the airwaves against angry criticisms like Landrieu’s and anguished cries for help, like that of Broussard, the local official who broke down sobbing.

"The guy who runs this building I’m in, emergency management, he’s responsible for everything," Broussard said. "His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, ’Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?’

"And he said, ’Yeah, Mama, somebody’s coming to get you. Somebody’s coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody’s coming to get you on Friday.’ And she drownded Friday night.

"Nobody’s coming to get us," he said through his tears. "Nobody’s coming to get us."

Landrieu warned of the risk to nearly submerged railway lines that serve a wide area of the country; another hurricane, she said, would have calamitous effect.

"We are one storm away from disaster," she said. "Doesn’t anybody hear us?"

Rice defends president

Rice defended Bush on Sunday against charges that the government’s sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina showed racial insensitivity, The Associated Press reported from Mobile, Alabama.

"Nobody, especially the president, would have left people unattended on the basis of race," the administration’s highest-ranking black said as she toured damaged parts of her native Alabama.

Some black lawmakers, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and other black leaders have complained bitterly about the slow response to the disaster, whose victims have been disproportionately black and poor, particularly in New Orleans. They have said racial injustice was a factor in the government’s slow relief effort.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/04/news/bush.php