More on Krugman's "Lethal Ineptitude"

I don't normally read Paul Krugman's column; that weird staring photo that accompanies it kind of creeps me out. He looks like somebody who would grab you by the lapel and just keep raving. You don't want to get any closer. But he seems to make a lot of others unable to avert their eyes. Of course, the disaster being Bush's fault is now accepted as scripture throughout the left and the MSM.

James Taranto skewers Krugman today. After quoting Krugman's blaming the misery on the Gulf Coast on conservatives who are hostile to the "very idea of using government to serve the public good," Taranto writes:

The obvious objection is that Krugman has a cartoonish view of conservatism, which is anything but uniformly antigovernment. . . And while it's true that Reagan described government as the problem, not the solution, 25 years ago, those words would be shockingly out of character if George W. Bush were to utter them. [And no conservative I know of ever proposed not funding FEMA. -AST]

The more interesting point is that Krugman's implicit view of liberalism is about 35 years out of date. To put it bluntly, American liberals no longer believe in activist government. Oh, they believe in big government, but that's a matter of feeding existing bureaucracies and interest groups. But suggest doing things differently--welfare reform, Social Security reform, the Patriot Act--and they have nothing to offer but fear, anger and hate.

Among the first complaints we heard when Katrina struck was that the government failed to respond because of (a) Iraq and (b) tax cuts. This is passive-aggressive politics, not activist government. Lyndon B. Johnson cut taxes and waged war both in Vietnam and on poverty. To be sure, LBJ's administration was far from an unqualified success, but the point is that in those days liberals were confident--arguably overconfident--in the power of activist government.

By contrast, consider some of the dour and whiny Democratic campaign slogans of the past two presidential campaigns: Lockbox. Risky scheme. Miserable failure. Two Americas. Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time. Let America be America again.

The only one we can remember that on the surface has anything like a can-do sound is John Kerry's "Bring it on." But this was not original; it was a variation on an utterance of President Bush's that was widely criticized as too activist. What's more, the "it" Kerry wanted to "bring on" was not some great challenge facing the nation. Kerry's use of the phrase was an exercise in narcissism, not civic-mindedness; he simply was threatening to become belligerent over personal slights. And even at that, it was an empty threat!

By the way, the one thing no one has had the audacity to say about the Katrina response is that Kerry would have done better. President Kerry would have faced this disaster with a grand total of 7 1/2 months' administrative experience in his lifetime, and as someone [Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco] once said, "This ship of state does not come with training wheels."

Checking that final quote, I found some other ironic quotes from Governor Blanco's last campaign for governor:

I would say I have very clear plans and ideas over what has to be done. But the big thing is that I know how to get them done and have gotten them done, and you have to have that inside knowledge of how to make government work for you.

She obviously wasn't referring to the State's response to a public safety and health crisis.

Anybody who tries to tell people they have all the answers is fooling the public.

But you said . . .?

Today's problems are decisions made by immature people of the past.

This is the woman whose reaction to the disaster was to break into sobs. I'm obviously taking these out of context, but for someone who ran on her competence, doesn't seem to have been all that responsible in this crisis.

BTW, Krugman's column begins with these lines:

Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I'm not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized. [Italics added]

I searched in vain for any comment in the rest of his column about state and local officials, whose "lethal ineptitude," being legally the first responders. Evidently, he is letting them off the hook. His hyperbole that the federal resources were NEVER mobilized, seems pretty irresponsible when you realize that the federal government response was essentially the only one that has made any difference.

The media's hysterical blaming of everything on Bush, is being reviewed and questioned by bloggers, talk radio and conservative commentators. I think this will end up as another example of the overwhelming bias among journalists. The list of egregious examples is getting pretty long, and the momentum is not with "journalism."

That impression is supported by the fact that the polls don't show most people joining the "Bush is to blame" hysteria. John Podhoretz explains why:

Once again we see the gigantic divide in this country -- not between Right and Left, but between people who live and breathe politics and those for whom politics are only an incidental part. You need to look at the world through political glasses to assume that THE key aspect of a natural disaster is the response or lack thereof of the authorities -- whether they be local, state or federal. The president doesn't MAKE hurricanes, therefore he will not be blamed FOR hurricanes. Nor do the governor and the mayor.

And though I have no doubt that this presidency has been damaged seriously by the hurricane's aftermath, the effort to use it as a wedge against other policies -- like the appointment of a new Supreme Court justice or even the emendation of the estate tax -- represent a kind of opportunistic political overreach on the part of the president's rivals that might come quickly to seem tasteless to much of the country.

I think that's precisely what's happening.