The LTEC Administration
In my blog reading, I'm seeing a bit of frustration and incredulity being expressed about the impressive speed with which the Bush League has been responding to the anticipated yet still terrifying disaster in Southern Louisiana.*
I suppose it will be only the America-hating liberals who will be slapping their foreheads, trying to understand how any group of people — even Republicans! — can be so insensitive, callous, and positively indifferent to the people for whom they were elected [or installed, if not actually elected] to govern, and to their responsibilities in the role of government leaders as stewards of our once proud and admired nation. I fear that many Americans might be embarrassed by the reduced esteem in which we are currently held by much of the world, but those same many Americans are too preoccupied at the moment — as the economy continues to "turn the corner" as it has done for the last 5 years during which each year has seen more Americans fall below the poverty line — with trying to survive.
The Bush League, long recognizable as an economic and social parasite, seems suddenly to have become the Let-Them-Eat-Cake Administration. Gosh, even some of the most apologetic Republican apologists are starting to sound a bit tentative in their usually stalwart conviction that the Bush League can do no wrong.
We were greatly impressed this week when the president, cutting short his near-record-length vacation by 4 days to fly back to his office a mere 4 days after the New-Orleans disaster was well under way, actually took it upon himself to ask the pilot of his own big airplane to fly low over New Orleans so that he might see the situation with his own eyes and even point out some evident landmarks to the amazed assembly of sycophants flying with him.
While we were gasping at the announcement that the president was finally going to tell his cabinet to get to work on this problem, we were also breathless to learn that the president's Secretary of State was taking in a Broadway show and shopping for exceedingly — does one dare say "excessively"? — expensive shoes in New York.
Fear not! We all know that it's really the Vice President who runs things anyway, although he seems to be AWOL, too — on vacation allegedly, someplace in Wyoming, but one wonders since he seems to keep having heart episodes that are variously reported as an old knee problem or else a visit to his old friend the cardiologist. If the unimainable happens and Condi suddenly becomes the next in succession, at least her feet will be well prepared to step into Presidential shoes.
We know that the current President, who never could have attained this office either by election, appointment, or acclamation on the basis of his own intelligence, feels that being President is a special treat: being special, he seems to feel that he gets to do the least work of all. I know, I know, he devotes his time to practicing how to stay on his bicycle and vacationing so he can be fresh and healthy and make crisp presidential-like decisions. Alas, that approach requires that one actually make decisions. We also know that many people feel that this President was guided into office by the hand of their God, which I don't think is likely now to win them many converts among the normal Americans who are trying to survive in this time of plenty for the select few.
Pat-Robertson-style Christian-assination threats aside, it might do the current Let Them Eat Cake Administration well to remember the fate of that other Let-Them-Eat-Cake lady.
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*I say "Southern Louisiana" out of deference to my cousins who live in the nearly devastated Slidell — there is more in Southern Louisiana than just New Orleans + wasteland.