America’s Nero Bush’s Impeachable Offense BY STEPHEN M. MINDICH AND PETER KADZIS

Disbelief. Horror. Outrage. Shame. Those are words, marks on paper. They are insufficient to capture the emotion and intellectual revulsion that arise from the national government’s incompetence and President Bush’s utter failure to take charge and lead in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster ever to savage the nation, devastating the Gulf Coast and threatening to turn New Orleans, a historic and soulful city, into a 21st-century Pompeii. Nero at least fiddled while Rome burned. As Katrina roared, Bush vacationed.

Few presidents are tested as sorely as Bush even once, let alone twice. When terrorists simultaneously attacked the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, Bush went into hiding. When the news first reached him of the New York attacks, he froze like a deer in oncoming headlights and continued reading to children in a Florida classroom. Commentators may praise his bravado days later when he appeared at Ground Zero and, bullhorn in hand, successfully rescued his compromised reputation. A nation in need of leadership and reassurance was forgiving and, in Hollywood fashion, rallied round. Today, the situation is different. No longer believing the lies and subsequent miscalculations that have mired us in the mind-numbing desolation called Iraq, Bush has no political capital with which to trade. Bush’s failure is America’s failure. We stand humbled before world opinion.

In the days after Katrina wore herself out, while television broadcasts continual scenes of death, devastation, and third-world deprivation, Bush’s smug and clueless disaster lieutenants, Homeland Insecurity czar Michael Chertoff and Emergency Mismanagement chief Michael Brown, denied there were problems — let alone a crisis of unimaginable and terrifying proportions. The Republicans are fond of railing against Washington’s pointy-headed bureaucrats. But this time the offenders were Bush men. And like their president, they proved to be cold, callous, and out-of-touch. A leader would have fired them. But Bush, who has no capacity for reappraising his own failures, and who fires people only for disloyalty, never for incompetence (hello, Donald Rumsfeld), let them stand. As long as they hold public positions, Chertoff and Brown will be the twin embodiments of a failure that can only be called inhumane.

In a bid for national unity, Bush spoke from the White House flanked by former presidents Clinton and Bush, hoping that his somber dad and the prime leader of the political opposition would give his bankrupt régime a patina of legitimacy. His advice to a nation worried about a new energy crisis triggered by the destruction of oil refineries and drills? Drive less. The traditional Republican paean to self-reliance never sounded so hollow, so stupid. His promise that gritty, culturally rich New Orleans would be rebuilt made an insipid sop seem positively surreal.

This is politics as usual recast as criminal contempt. Contempt for the intelligence of a nation that has finally recognized that Bush lied to get us embroiled in Iraq; contempt for the lives of those killed, displaced, stranded, and suffering as a result of Katrina. If this doesn’t meet the constitutional standard for high crimes and misdemeanors needed to impeach a president, what does? The only thought that is more repugnant than Bush continuing in office is the prospect that his even more loathsome vice-president, the aptly named Dick Cheney, would succeed him. So those of us who dream of a Bush-free America have nothing more with which to console ourselves than two more years of continuing disgrace.

Even conservatives can’t stomach the spectacle. The Manchester Union Leader, the Washington Times, public television’s John McLaughlin, the paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan, and Louisiana’s own Republican senator David Vitter have been critical in terms that range from disappointed to scathing.

Time will undoubtedly demonstrate that the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana have a lot to answer for. Precautions and preparation were clearly inadequate. Mexico, for example, keeps 10 days of food, water, and coffee available at its convention centers and sports stadiums in case those public facilities have to be turned into safe havens in the event of earthquakes or hurricanes.

But only the national government has the resources and the muscle to respond to disaster — nature- or terrorist-induced. As many of the military experts employed by various networks have explained repeatedly, the failure to engage federal troops immediately is inexplicable. America has the means; Bush lacks the imagination and leadership.

By all accounts, the devastation inland is just as appalling as that in New Orleans. And Bush’s failure there is just as painful and shameful. But New Orleans is a special case, not only because of its concentrated population and its cultural and economic significance. It has been rated as the third-most-likely target of a terrorist attack. If what we’ve seen — or failed to see — happen in that city is any indication, then the entire nation is woefully unprepared for an ambitious terrorist assault. When three years ago the director of the Army Corps of Engineers testified on Capitol Hill that Bush-mandated budget cuts would hamper the corps’s ability to maintain that portion of the nation’s infrastructure in its charge, he was given 30 minutes to resign or be fired.

But Bush’s failure is far graver than this example of historic ineptitude. His feel-good vision of America — which at least half the voters have more or less accepted if you abide by the questionable legitimacy of both elections — is a fraud. It’s no mistake that those most seriously affected were poor, working-class, minority, or old. The Republican Party has abandoned citizens who aren’t affluent. Its policies have long done so in spirit, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots has grown accordingly. Now Bush has hammered the reality home in fact. Although race, per se, played no role in the Bushies’ decision-making process, it’s clear that the only thing worse than being poor is being poor and black.

The bill of indictments against Bush is exhaustive. But it is worth noting that at a time when we sorely need help, the Bush administration has done nothing to accept the offers of foreign help that have resulted — even from such unlikely places as France, Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran. Rather than demonstrate America’s self-confidence by accepting help from those who oppose our misguided Iraq adventure or even from Cuba, a poverty-stricken nation we still inexplicably consider a threat, Bush demonstrates his narrow and ignorant vision by doing nothing.

Bush has impeached his own credibility and legitimacy. His legacy is a dismal one. We can only hope that his opponents in Washington will capitalize on his now-naked position by stopping him from doing any more damage.

Stephen M. Mindich is publisher and chairman of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group. Peter Kadzis is editor of the Boston Phoenix.