Wednesday, September 21, 2005


Neither compassionate, nor conservative:

Not even the most liberal social engineers would dare to have been as bold as the Bush administration. The President gives no accounting of how the money will be found. His governing philosophy appears to be: “It's going to cost whatever it's going to cost” in contrast to the vision of “focused and effective and energetic government”, David Brooks imputes to him. Mr Bush has left the oversight in the hands of his political operative, Karl Rove, suggesting that this a major PR exercise, rather than (per Brooks) “a positive use of government that is neither big government liberalism nor antigovernment libertarianism”. (As an aside, maybe Mr Rove should have been placed in charge of the initial rescue effort. Without a single mishap, the Bush “rescue team” delivered to central New Orleans its own generators, lights, the camouflage netting designed to conceal the surrounding devastation, and its own communications equipment; the city almost looked whole again. The Federal government, it appears, cannot run an evacuation and relief effort properly, but it does a magnificent job of televised stage-setting in a disaster area.)