Cao Disputes Bush’s Comment That Not Landing Air Force One Was His Biggest Mistake During Katrina
Cao Disputes Bush’s Comment That Not Landing Air Force One Was His Biggest Mistake During Katrina
Yesterday, ThinkProgress spoke to freshmen Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), who recently beat incumbent Democrat William Jefferson. House Republicans are pointing to Cao — who was able to win in a heavily African-American district — as the future of their party. Interestingly though, Cao didn’t run on partisan conservatives issues. He received almost no backing from the national Republican party and told ThinkProgress that his top policy concern is the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
Yesterday in his final press conference, President Bush addressed Katrina by hitting back on criticisms his administration received: “Don’t tell me the federal response was slow.” When asked about his biggest mistakes in office, Bush addressed Katrina only by saying that he could have landed Air Force One and avoided the infamous disastrous photo op.
When ThinkProgress spoke to Cao yesterday, he disputed Bush’s comments:
CAO: Well, from experiencing the devastation of it and living through it, I believe the federal response was a little slow, given the fact there were people stranded in their homes, people not having foods to eat, not having water to drink. I believe that the FEMA could have been more prepared and more proactive in their response to Katrina.
Q: And do you think that the worst mistake was not landing Air Force One?
CAO: No. Whether or not the President landed Air Force One, I don’t think would have contributed to the federal response of Katrina. It would have conveyed a message that he had a lot more concerns for the plight of the people, but I don’t think that the landing of Air Force One would have improved the federal response to Katrina.
Watch it:
When asked about it will take to rebuild the Gulf Coast, Cao replied, “Coastal restoration, health care, and education — you name it, we need it.”
Transcript:
CAO: Well, from experiencing the devastation of it and living through it, I believe the federal response was a little slow, given the fact there were people stranded in their homes, people not having foods to eat, not having water to drink. I believe that the FEMA could have been more prepared and more proactive in their response to Katrina.
Q: And do you think that the worst mistake was not landing Air Force One?
CAO: No. Whether or not the President landed Air Force One, I don’t think would have contributed to the federal response of Katrina. It would have conveyed a message that he had a lot more concerns for the plight of the people, but I don’t think that the landing of Air Force One would have improved the federal response to Katrina.
Q: And what more, if you don’t mind me asking — And what more now, currently, needs to be done to complete the recovery from Katrina?
CAO: Oh, gosh. Besides all the issues that I just outlined? Coastal restoration, health care, and education — you name it, we need it. Most of the areas are still very much devastated. Homes remain empty, businesses have not returned, hospitals are not up, many schools are in shambles. The rebuilding process still needs extensive attention from the federal government, and the second district will require much more federal aid in order to fully recover.
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Interestingly though, Cao didn’t run on partisan conservatives issues. He received almost no backing from the national Republican party and told ThinkProgress that his top policy concern is the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
Well, cough cough, he’s not really part of the club. Not quite the thing, dontcha know. He’s, cough cough, brown.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:23 pmBush would have just been in the way had he landed. A further waste of time and resources.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:25 pmNot quite the thing, dontcha know. He’s, cough cough, brown.
NOKD
Not our kind, dear.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:27 pmHe sounds like a pragmatist.
He might be politically dangerous, if he gets inside the big tent perimeter…
January 13th, 2009 at 8:29 pmBush never did get it. People were dying from dehydration and he was worried about photo ops. Remember how he walked around with rolled up sleeves? Here is a quote from one of the debates with Al Gore: “Al, natural disasters test your metal.” People on the the Gulf Coast got the assay results loud and clear, George is pure silver spoon.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:34 pmalthough we all know how horrifically craven and self-absorbed bush is, it is still startling every time he demonstrates it.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:36 pmThe point, which Cao saw, is that whether or not to land Air Force one was irrelevant to the question of whythe response was so slow. Bush was being an idiot for acting like that was the only decision there was to make.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:41 pmhahahaha….this guy isn’t going to last long in the Repuglican party.
he’ll be read the riot act soon enough.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:44 pmCAO: Oh, gosh. Besides all the issues that I just outlined? Coastal restoration, health care, and education — you name it, we need it.
Hmmmmm… sounds like this guy is in the wrong party.
Or we have a rare sighting of that rare critter, a halfway reasonable Republican.
Not to be confused with that mythical creature, the totally reasonable Republican.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:45 pmI predict a polonium milkshake from the RNC for this man in the future.
January 13th, 2009 at 8:49 pmHippie_crusher Says:
January 13th, 2009 at 9:01 pm“AND THE REAL NEWS LOSERS….”
You’re a little late with this one, two trolls behind as it were.
He paid the taxes,interest and penalties before he was nominated.
Crushed_by_hippies Says:
WASHINGTON — Timothy Geithner didn’t pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for several years while he worked for the International Monetary Fund, and he employed an immigrant housekeeper who briefly lacked proper work papers.
If you’d learn to read you’d know that even the Wall Street Journal wrote that IMF rules were extremely confusing, that many of their employees made the same mistake and that he immediately paid back taxes when notified. And his housekeeper was legitimate when he hired her and was briefly without a green card. BFD.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:02 pmHe paid the taxes,interest and penalties before he was nominated.
AND the Democrats did their due diligent. Which is a term I’m sure the Republicans will be unsure of.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:05 pmThe more I hear about this guy, the more I respect him. Hell, if I lived in the Louisiana 2nd, I probably would’ve voted for him. Seems he’s already done more for Katrina survivors than Dollar Bill.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:19 pmOT – but this headline caught my attention and i wanted to put it out there… the subject is a personal favorite…
Obama’s likely FCC choice has a heart for start-ups
Computerworld – 47 minutes ago
By Patrick Thibodeau Genachowski was chief counsel to former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt in the mid-1990s, during the period when Congress approved the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated that industry.
… THE biggest mistake that makes ME angry with bill clinton…
but the line at the actual story/link sounds hopeful:
Genachowski’s venture-capital experience could signal shift away from industry consolidation
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9125878&intsrc=hm_list
haven’t been able to read up on this… but wanted to get some feedback…
back to rachel…
January 13th, 2009 at 9:22 pmThe bush legacy all over the world:
restoration, health care, and education — you name it, we need it. Most of the areas are still very much devastated. Homes remain empty, businesses have not returned, hospitals are not up, many schools are in shambles.
Everything just happens to become a total fck-up? Coincidence? Hardly.
Showing some empathy would be nice, but don’t a few things come to mind that could’ve kept people from dying? Anything? Loads of clean water, maybe?
All those lessons learned from the last disaster?
The blue dog republican talking about health care, that future? Ok.
January 13th, 2009 at 9:38 pmQUICK! Someone clone this RINO before he mutates!
January 13th, 2009 at 9:50 pmWhen someone decides to smear someone else, the last thing the smearer will do is help the one being smeared.
This is exactly what happened during Katrina.
The day New Orleans flooded in 2005, criminal Republicans running the political office in the Bush White House (Karl Rove) saw the flooding as a great opportunity…to smear the Democratic governor of Louisiana and Democratic mayor of New Orleans…to lay the groundwork for Republicans in Louisiana to win these positions in the next election.
So, why would the criminal Republicans in the White House do anything to help Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D-LA) and Mayor Ray Nagin (D-LA), or as they’ve proven time and again over the past eight torturous years, any Democrats, for that matter?
Former Governor Blanco (D-LA) officially requested federal disaster assistance about 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina made landfall. The Bush White House responded by naming a twenty-year FEMA veteran as the FEMA disaster coordinator for Louisiana. This guy set up a FEMA command center in Baton Rouge before Katrina hit. (One of the first smears against former Gov. Blanco and echoed through the right-wing media noise machine on the morning of the flooding of New Orleans was that she hadn’t officially requested federal disaster assistance before Katrina hit, but the official documents on the the White House website, at that time, showed otherwise).
Last year in an interview, former Gov. Blanco stated that everyone at this Baton Rouge FEMA command center on the morning New Orleans flooded were shocked when all the phones rang off the wall, with reporters inundating the center with calls in response to the right-wing smear campaign launched from the Bush White House. The federal, state and local government officials at the FEMA command center were having a hard enough time getting calls in and out to help save lives and ease the suffering of people caught in Hurricane Katrina’s path, but a huge load of incoming calls from right-wing reporters didn’t help matters any.
The evening of the day New Orleans flooded I read a short article on-line, posted by a displaced New Orleans’ reporter who had been at the FEMA command center in Baton Rouge earlier that day. This reporter said that the FEMA disaster coordinator was fuming due to the frustration he was having in getting his disaster relief orders followed, especially as he tried to rush federal aid to stranded citizens in the flooded city of New Orleans. The FEMA disaster coordinator said that some of his efforts were being outright blocked while others involving getting FEMA rescue personnel and equipment into New Orleans and surrounding areas saw these disaster relief resources re-directed elsewhere. In other words, someone higher-up in the Bush administration was overruling the FEMA disaster coordinator for Louisiana and the flooded city of New Orleans.
But let’s return to the smear campaign being waged by the Bush White House and Republican-controlled media outlets against Democratic leaders in Louisiana and my first paragraph above.
Why would the political arm of the Bush White House have been interested in helping Louisiana officials (and the in-state FEMA disaster coordinator) respond to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, saving lives where possible, even as the political arm of the Bush White House was trying to score political points in Lousiana by smearing the Democratic Party leaders there?
Do you now understand what happened during the deadly days that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall?
Do you see why the federal disaster response in Louisiana and especially in the flooded city of New Orleans appeared so inadequate relative to the scale of the disaster?
Someone high-up in the Bush White House, probably involving multiple cabinet members (Chertoff at DHS, Rumsfeld at DOD) shorted/blocked federal disaster relief efforts in Louisiana, even as they shifted federal disaster resources to the Republican-run states of Mississippi and Alabama, two Gulf Coast states also in the path of Hurricane Katrina, but with Republican governors. In other words, the corrupt, criminal and 24/7 partisan Republicans politicized the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and some of our fellow American citizens in New Orleans died because of this.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:11 pmThis says alot about the Republican Party and now they think they can use this man. Funny how people treat you like dirt until they need you and after tick you back out. Look at how Bush treated Spanish people when he needed their vote then talked about them like a dog. Some think only Republicans have a problem with minorities but Democrats are part of that racist good too. Harry Reid uses his State Spanish population for votes and then sets back and watches the unemployment rate in Nevada reach 8 per cent, while to campigans support for Ted Stevens. This Obama/Biden Administration might be more of a change for the Senior Law Makers then most Americans.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:12 pmThis man makes too much sense to be a Republican.
It won’t be long before he finds out how racist, bigoted, and ignorant his fellow Republicans truly are, if he doesn’t already.
January 13th, 2009 at 10:42 pmneed the link, wizard, please. just too long to read through now…
here’s a good one, from last night:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#28629487
RACHEL MADDOW talks with “former Times-Picayune city editor Jed Horne” about katrina and new orleans…
January 13th, 2009 at 11:06 pmImagine that, another well-coached, well-oiled response to ( yet another ) natural disaster from yet another of this countrys legion of self-serving politcal scum. Am I the only one who feels that that lately the only winners are ” spin-doctors ” and ” political advisors ” – after all, thier ” frontmen ” have to suffer public vilification, whilst they remain safely hidden in the shadows (( all you X-file fans just move on to the next site RIGHT now, it ain’t about that ))? ) On a side note, has anyone else noticed the exponential rise in ” natural disasters ” that this country has endured/suffered in the past 50+ years ( and before you start, I AIN’T old, nor am I grumpy.)
January 13th, 2009 at 11:58 pmGeorge W. Bush hates black people (indicated at http://andrewyu-jenwang.blogspot.com/2008/12/andrew-yu-jen-wang-responds-to-stokely.html “George W. Bush hates black people”).
“Had the residents of New Orleans been white Republicans in a state that mattered politically, instead of poor blacks in city that didn’t, Bush’s response surely would have been different. Compare what happened when hurricanes Charley and Frances hit Florida in 2004. Though the damage from those storms was negligible in relation to Katrina’s, the reaction from the White House was instinctive, rapid, and generous to the point of profligacy. Bush visited hurricane victims four times in six weeks and delivered relief checks personally. Michael Brown of FEMA, now widely regarded as an incompetent political hack, was so responsive that local officials praised the agency’s performance.”
“The kind of constituency politics that results in a big life-preserver for whites in Florida and a tiny one for blacks in Louisiana may not be racist by design or intent. But the inevitable result is clear racial discrimination. It won’t change when Republicans care more about blacks. It will change when they have more reason to care.”
Jacob Weisberg. (2005, September 7). An Imperfect Storm . . . How race shaped Bush’s response to Katrina. Slate. Retrieved December 7, 2008, from http://www.slate.com/?id=2125812&nav=tap2/
It should be obvious to the American people why Bush failed relative to the Katrina response.
Submitted by Andrew Yu-Jen Wang
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
“GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE WORST PRESIDENT IN U.S. HISTORY” BLOG OF ANDREW YU-JEN WANG
ONLINE ANTI-BUSH SCHOLASTIC RESEARCH: LISTING OF MAJOR ISSUES
http://andrewyu-jenwang.blogspot.com/2008/10/bush-is-worst-president-in-american.html
January 14th, 2009 at 1:59 amBush. What a discrace.
January 14th, 2009 at 2:51 amgummitch Says:
Perhaps but that was not what HippyLicker was TOLD to believe. The really ignorant trolls like HippyLicker are way to stupid to find anything out for themselves. They troll rightwing websites and listen to AM hateradio to find out what to think.
January 14th, 2009 at 4:18 amBush’s biggest mistake was not declaring a national emergency soon enough. He waited to order the military to help. Recall the stories of soldiers in Pensacola, FL playing basketball instead of helping to rescue or clear roads? They had no orders.
Cao is the closest thing to an average American in the Congress. He wasn’t supported by his party, because they didn’t see him as electable. Stay independent Rep. Cao!
January 14th, 2009 at 9:57 amKanye West had it all wrong.
It’s not that George Bush doesn’t care about black people.
It’s the poor he can do without.
January 14th, 2009 at 10:15 amDon’t worry. John Boehner will muzzle this uppity brown fella right smart before he can make any more trouble.
/snark
January 14th, 2009 at 10:22 am