Levees Not War

“I don’t spend a lot of time really worrying about short-term history. I guess I don’t worry about long-term history, either, since I’m not going to be around to read it [laughs].”

—George W. Bush, “I Did Not Compromise My Principles,”
interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson (12/1/08)

AlterNet.org

Part of the history that Mr. Bush won’t be reading can be found in a transcript of his speech from Jackson Square on Sept. 15, 2005, two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Rather, historians can note the great gulf between the promises made in that speech (examples below) and the inaction that followed. More than fifteen visits to New Orleans and vicinity, which the President repeatedly referred to as “that part of the world,” were not accompanied by a concerted federal effort to rebuild the city and region, its schools and hospitals and housing, its infrastructure, or its storm protection systems whose funding had been repeatedly whittled down by Bush administration budgets before the storm.

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“I feel change in the air. . . . It is time again for a new generation of leadership.”

Senator Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama on Jan. 28 in an appearance with Caroline Kennedy and Rep. Patrick Kennedy at American University, Washington, D.C. Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/New York Times.

It was reported Tuesday that Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was hospitalized on Saturday after a seizure, has been diagnosed with malignant glioma, a brain tumor for which the prognosis is rarely favorable. First elected to the Senate in 1962 when his older brother John was president, Ted Kennedy has long been the Democratic party’s most stalwart promoter and prolific legislator for civil rights, education, labor, housing and social security—a one-man holder-together of the social safety net.

We’re praying for his recovery and for his family at this painful, uncertain time, and we hope the nation will pause to recognize the many good causes he has worked for all his life. He was born into privilege but has devoted his career to passing laws that make life a little easier for the general public—for mothers and children, for factory workers and immigrants, and especially on behalf of the less (and least) fortunate. May God send us more senators like him!—a hundred more!

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