The Patriot Post® · The Presidential Politics of Hurricanes

By Douglas Andrews ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/110983-the-presidential-politics-of-hurricanes-2024-10-11

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans on August 29, 2005, George W. Bush was eight months into his second term. Thus, presidential election politics didn’t weigh into the harsh criticism his administration received for its relief response.

Still, regarding Katrina, Bush is remembered for two moments: that iconic image of his well-meaning but ill-considered 30,000-foot Air Force One flyover, and that throwaway comment he made to his hapless FEMA director during the height of the suffering: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

Never mind that within four days of the hurricane’s landfall, Bush signed a $10.4 billion aid package and sent 7,200 National Guard troops to the region, and that a few days later, he got congressional approval for an additional $51.8 billion in aid.

Never mind that Bush was on the ground in the affected areas of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana four days later, on September 2, whereas it took Joe Biden a full week after Hurricane Helene’s landfall to shake the Rehoboth Beach sand out of his shoes and visit the devastation in western North Carolina.

And never mind that a full 30 months after the Katrina disaster, Democrats were still politicizing it. Take presidential candidate Barack Obama, for example, who was demonizing Bush on the campaign trail in February 2008: “When the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast extended their hand for help, help was not there,” he said. “We can talk about levees that couldn’t hold, about a FEMA that seemed not just incompetent but paralyzed and powerless, about a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground.”

The Bush administration worked hard during Katrina’s aftermath, but the Democrats and their mainstream media water carriers had already seized the narrative.

With this relatively recent history in mind, it’s no surprise that the battle over the Hurricane Helene narrative is still raging and that the Democrats have become awfully defensive. Indeed, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are railing against “the lies” of Donald Trump, while Biden’s binder-toting press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, is shutting down serious journalistic inquiry as “misinformation.” Here’s a smattering of Biden’s invective:

The last few weeks, there’s been a reckless, irresponsible, and relentless promotion of disinformation and outright lies. It’s undermining confidence in the incredible rescue and recovery work that has already been taken [sic] and will continue to be taken [sic]. It’s harmful to those who need help the most.

Assertions have been made that property is being confiscated. That’s simply not true. They’re saying people impacted by these storms will receive $750 in cash and no more. That’s simply not true. They’re saying the money needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants. What a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not true. We’re controlling the weather — it’s beyond ridiculous. It’s got to stop, moments like this. There are no red or blue states.

I don’t know. I simply don’t know. You can speculate, but I just find it — I’ve used the phrase more than I’ve used it ever my whole career — un-American. It’s un-American. It’s not who the hell we are. What are they talking about?

Here, Biden is taking the out-of-context comments from the fringes of social media — that the Democrats are confiscating people’s land and controlling the weather — and passing these comments off as mainstream criticism from the Right. It’s rubbish, but it’s not beneath Joe Biden.

And as for “lies,” how about this two-headed whopper: “They’re getting everything they need. And they’re very happy across the board.” That was Joe Biden himself last week, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Donald Trump has indeed been critical of the Biden-Harris administration’s response, and, as is his style, he’s relied on superlatives to do so. Trump called it “the worst hurricane response since Katrina.” But is he wrong? Has the Biden-Harris regime and its FEMA operatives really done a decent job?

“She’s just led the worst rescue operation in history in North Carolina,” Trump said at a campaign event on Wednesday. “The worst ever, they say.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, JD Vance was more specific:

Shortly after Helene made landfall in the U.S. on Sept. 26, Joe Biden was at his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del. Vice President Kamala Harris was flying between ritzy California fundraisers, hobnobbing with celebrities. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas was in Los Angeles, presiding over an awards ceremony. Before the storm, Ms. Harris had blown off her disaster-response briefings, which were a staple of the Trump administration’s disaster-response planning. The lack of prioritization had real-world ramifications. …

On Oct. 2, six days after the storm made landfall, the Defense Department announced that 1,000 troops had been authorized to deploy to the hurricane-response zone, including elements of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Liberty, N.C. … As evening fell on Friday, Oct. 4, fewer than half of the 1,000 troops were conducting operations and deployed to Western North Carolina.

These are scathing, fact-based criticisms, but the White House is trying to silence it. Indeed, Karine Jean-Pierre “stomped away from her briefing Monday” after a back-and-forth with Fox News’s Peter Doocy over the administration’s response and its prioritization of funds.

As the New York Post reports: “Doocy asked Jean-Pierre to explain why the Biden-Harris administration had nearly $157 million at the ready to assist displaced people and refugees in Lebanon, but needs to beg Congress for additional funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as FEMA faces a shortfall in the aftermath of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene.”

Jean-Pierre’s non-response? “We’ve taken this very seriously. More than $200 million that we have provided to the impacted areas, but instead, people want to do disinformation, misinformation, which is dangerous.”

If you can’t stand the heat, dismiss it as “disinformation” and “misinformation.”

It’s hard to say what the longer-term political ramifications of Hurricane Helene will be, but it’s fair to say that what goes around comes around. The Biden-Harris administration is on defense, and deservedly so.

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