
- There was the tearing and unnecessary war over his health-care proposal and its cost.
- There was his day-to-day indifference to the views and hopes of the majority of voters regarding illegal immigration.
- And now the past almost 40 days of dodging and dithering in the face of an environmental calamity.
Trust us here in Washington we will prove worthy of your trust. Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job could not meet need in fact seemed faraway and incapable: We pay so much for the government and it cant cap an undersea oil well!
This is what happened with Katrina and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didnt like about the Bush administration everything it didnt like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there soggily and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities the more it took on the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. Conservatives got this pointthey know it without being toldbut liberals and progressives did not. They thought Katrina was the result only of George W. Bushs incompetence and conservatives failure to believe in government. But Mr. Obama was supposed to be competent. Remarkable too is the way both BP and the government 40 days in continue to act shocked shocked that an accident like this could have happened. If youre drilling for oil in the deep sea of course something terrible can happen so you have a plan on what to do when it does. How could there not have been a plan? How could it all be so ad hoc so inadequate so embarrassing? Were plugging it now with tires mud and golf balls? What continues to fascinate me is Mr. Obamas standing with Democrats. They dont love him. Half the party voted for Hillary Clinton and her people have never fully reconciled themselves to him. But he is what they have. They are invested in him. In timeafter the 2010 elections go badlythey are going to start to peel off. The political operative James Carville the most vocal and influential of the presidents Gulf critics signaled to Democrats this week that they can start to peel off. He did it through the passion of his denunciations. The disaster in the Gulf may well spell the political end of the president and his administration and that is no cause for joy. Its not good to have a president in this positionweakened polarizing and lacking broad public supportless than halfway through his term. That it is his fault is no comfort. It is not good for the stability of the world or its safety that the leader of the indispensable nation be so weakened. I never until the past 10 years understood the almost moral imperative that an American president maintain a high standing in the eyes of his countrymen. Mr. Obama himself when running for president made much of Bush administration distraction and detachment during Katrina. Now the Republican Party will understandably go to town on Mr. Obamas having gone only once to the gulf and the fund-raiser in San Francisco that seemed to take precedence and the EPA chief who decided to skip a New York fund-raiser only after the press reported that she planned to attend. But Republicans should beware and even mute their mischief. Were in the middle of an actual disaster. When they win back the presidency theyll probably get the big California earthquake. And theyll probably blow it. Because ironically enough of a hard core of truth within their own philosophy: when you ask a government far away in Washington to handle everything it will handle nothing well. (Correction: The EPA chief skipped the New York fund-raiser. An earlier version of this column said that she had attended it.)