Some media are favorably comparing the Obama Administration’s response to the new flu outbreak to the Bush Administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. Reports the Associated Press:
President Barack Obama tries to learn from his predecessors’ mistakes, and some see his fast, wide-ranging response to the swine flu threat as a lesson learned from George W. Bush’s much-maligned handling of Hurricane Katrina.
Similarly, POLITICO’s Mike Allen writes in Playbook today that the flu “provides the President the chance to be the ANTI-KATRINA.”
With all due respect, I think this is wishful and premature thinking.
Right now, hurricanes and pandemics look similar: You can see the trouble on the horizon, but the disaster’s path and severity is hard to predict. Instead, just about all government can do in the short-term is preposition resources, urge the public to take responsible precautions, and hope for the best.
With that in mind, it’s striking how Obama’s handling of the run-up to a potential full-blown pandemic is the same as Bush’s actions before Katrina. Both maintained their normal public calendars as the disaster began to hit (Obama’s town hall in Missouri yesterday reminded me of Bush’s visit to San Diego in 2005), and both claimed to be receiving regular updates, but held no press events dedicated solely to discuss the pending disasters.
Hopefully this flu will turn out to be nowhere as destructive as Katrina. But if the metaphor is accurate, then the storm is just beginning to hit land. Assuming the bug continues to spread — as the W.H.O.’s Level 5 warning suggests it will — then things have the potential to get much worse before they get better.
As we saw with Katrina, the public judges presidents by the effectiveness of government’s actions in the wake of disasters –- not how it prepares for them in advance. Ultimately, Obama will not be judged by his actions this week, but rather how government responds if the flu outbreak becomes a full-scale pandemic.
Tags: AP, communications, disaster, obama, pandemic, politico, White House
