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Fri Sep 23 11:13:00 PDT 2005

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THE ICE STORM
Sep 15th 2005  

Katrina has probably frozen politics, not changed it

FOUR years ago, September 11th shook American politics to its
foundations. It not only turbo-charged the presidency and shifted the
balance of power yet more to the Republicans. It also affected
deep-seated attitudes to government, as Dick Cheney sensed: "One thing
that's changed so much since September 11th is the extent to which
people do trust the government--big shift--and value it, and have
higher expectations for what we can do."

Will Hurricane Katrina produce an equally big shift? Harry Reid, the
Democratic leader in the Senate, thinks that Katrina "changed the
future. Enough is enough. No more Bush business-as-usual." Commentators
from left and right have pointed out that, a century ago, natural
disasters helped to launch the Progressive movement. But the truth is
that, as far as politics is concerned, Katrina is an ice storm not a
hurricane--freezing politics in pre-existing patterns, rather than
tossing things into the air.

Katrina has undoubtedly depleted the president's political capital. Mr
Bush was already in trouble before the storm: since 1945 only one
second-term president, Richard Nixon, has seen a sharper rise in his
disapproval ratings. The hurricane is making things worse. The number
of people who think that the administration had no clear plan to deal
with the disaster is growing (from 55% on September 2nd to 63% on
September 11th). And Mr Bush's critics feel more strongly than his
defenders: 39% strongly disapprove, compared with only 24% who strongly
approve. As for independent voters, they are almost twice as likely to
disapprove of his performance as to approve of it.

Katrina has blown away two of Mr Bush's strongest selling points: that
he is a take-charge kind of guy and that he has made the country safer.
How can the "MBA president" tout his managerial competence when he has
stuffed the Federal Emergency Management Agency with cronies? (Five of
FEMA's eight top employees had no experience of handling disasters when
they were appointed.) And how can he claim to have made the country
safer when a long-predicted disaster turned New Orleans into something
out of "Heart of Darkness"? 

For all that, Mr Bush can rely on three political safety nets. The most
obvious is that, in this age of instant news, first impressions don't
necessarily last. Mr Bush is at last getting his act together. He
accepted blame for the federal government's failures and visited New
Orleans. Another visit and a national address, perhaps announcing a
"reconstruction tsar", were due later this week. Meanwhile, some of the
direst predictions of Katrina's effect in terms of casualties are
proving to be ill founded. 

The second safety net is the dismal performance of local Democrats.
Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, was tardy in removing
bureaucratic restrictions that prevented out-of-state doctors from
working in her state. Mayor Ray Nagin failed to deal with widely
discussed flaws in New Orleans's evacuation plan. 

The third safety net is partisanship: faithful Republicans and
Democrats witnessed different catastrophes in the Gulf. Most
Republicans still approve of Mr Bush's performance. Indeed, the fact
that one American in four "strongly approves" of his actions over
Katrina suggests that nothing short of evidence of treason can turn
diehard conservatives against this president--if that.

The partisan divide also means that the White House has few incentives
to change "Bush business-as-usual". Yes, he must devote his political
capital to reforming homeland security rather than reforming Social
Security, but pension reform was a dead duck before Katrina. Yes, he
will have to blow as much as $200 billion on rebuilding the Gulf coast,
but he hardly had a reputation for fiscal frugality. Mr Bush now has
even more reasons to pander to the people who are keeping him from
political free-fall: hard-core Republicans. The chances that he will
nominate a conservative judge to replace Sandra Day O'Connor--probably
Priscilla Owen--are higher than ever.

What about the broader balance of power in Washington, DC? Talk of an
ever-expanding Republican majority--bringing in blacks, for
instance--now looks dated. But the fact that the Republicans can no
longer advance does not mean they are now in retreat. The mid-term
elections are more than a year away, and the Republicans have plenty of
arrows in their quiver. Many congressional races are still decided by
local factors. House races are rigged in favour of incumbents, while
the Democrats are defending more Senate seats than the Republicans (18
compared with 15). And Katrina poses problems for the Democrats, too.
If they criticise Mr Bush for throwing money at the problem, they may
come across as mean-spirited; if they criticise the president for not
spending enough money, they risk their reputation for fiscal
responsibility; and if they play the Iraq card, they probably split
their own party.

THE LIMITED CHARM OF BIG GOVERNMENT
The hurricane is even less likely to revolutionise the ideological
debate about the role of government. Everybody agrees that America
needs more "efficient government", of course; and everybody agrees that
it needs to clarify the division of power between federal and state
government. But that hardly constitutes a philosophical revolution, not
least because small-government conservatives already claim Katrina as
an indictment of government power rather than an open-and-shut case for
more of it. Look, for instance, at the private sector's efficiency: all
but 15 of the 126 Wal-Mart facilities shut down by Katrina are up and
running. Surely the way to rebuild New Orleans is not yet more pork,
but lighter taxes and fewer regulations? 

If this argument sounds familiar, then that is indicative. Sometimes
great catastrophes shake up everything they touch. But they can also
just produce muddle and confusion--and then reinforce long-standing
divisions. In political terms, Katrina is more likely to be a
mould-freezer than a mould-breaker.

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=4403361

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