Sunday, September 11, 2005

After Katrina: Hopelessness lifts, Democrats go on the offensive

As the recovery efforts continue in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, as that overriding sense of hopelessness begins to lift and the death toll looks like it might actually be much lower than all those dire predictions last week, Democratic senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Barack Obama of Illinois, among others, went on the offensive Sunday in response to President Bush's handling of the crisis and subsequent Republican efforts to deflect attention away from Bush by pinnning the blame squarely on local officials.

I said much of what I have to say in a previous post. It's important, I think, to find out what went wrong, what could have been done better, and who (or what) is to blame, but it's a shame, however predictable, that partisanship has taken over.

Politics. As usual.

So much for the truth.

posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at 11:20 PM

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1 Comments:

  • Well, the problem is truth is in the eye of the beholder. And I'm not so convinced that non-partisanship is the best way to approach this. During the Cold War, we had an ostensible non-partisan foreign policy where both parties were reluctant to criticize the president. I'm not sure we would not have been better off to some degree with a little more partisanship and less passivity. Maybe we could have used a little more critical analysis of our foreign policy prior to Viet Nam.

    I don't think that partisanship is NECESSARILY the same thing as lack of truth. It reflects one perspective.

    What we need, I think, is not necessarily less partisanship, but a media that balances the partisanship with thoughtful, nuanced reporting rather than interviews with Harry Connick. I guess we won't be seeing that soon though.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:25 PM  

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