Beyond the Dean campaign, a thriving community of liberal bloggers had developed politically active communities online. Several formed in the aftermath of the 2000 election, such as Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo (TPM), which debuted during the Florida recount. By the time of the 2004 election, the liberal “blogosphere” was fully formed. A number of prominent new voices—Markos Moulitsas of The Daily Kos, Duncan Black of Eschaton, and Jesse Taylor and Ezra Klein of Pandagon—took their laptops directly to the presidential conventions that year to report live in makeshift war rooms that seemed like low-budget guerilla versions of the cable news networks’ operations. In many ways, these liberal blogs represented the real answer to right-wing radio. “Left-wing politics are thriving on blogs the way Rush Limbaugh has dominated talk radio,” the New York Times Magazine noted in a September 2004 piece titled “Fear and Laptops on the Campaign Trail,” “and in the last six months, the angrier, nastier partisan blogs have been growing the fastest.” 9
As liberals and leftists ramped up their activism across these new forms of media, the Democratic Party rallied around Massachusetts senator John Kerry as its presidential nominee. A decorated Vietnam veteran, Kerry had risen to national fame after returning home and leading other veterans in protest against a war they had come to see as a mistake. Kerry and the Democrats hoped his military record would inoculate him from the kind of attacks that the Republicans had made in the 2002 midterms and, more pointedly, offer a contrast to President Bush, who had secured safe domestic assignments during Vietnam. But Republicans mounted a fierce pushback, portraying Kerry as a flip-flopping liberal elitist with no clear stance on terrorism. Nominally independent organizations such as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth even challenged Kerry’s record of military service, publicly claiming that the wartime incidents in a navy swift boat for which he had been awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts were fabrications. (The term “swiftboating,” meaning a smear campaign against a candidate, soon became part of the political lexicon.) Ultimately, the allegations blunted Kerry’s ability to use his military record and made the race incredibly close.
In the general election, both sides mobilized their bases with increasingly charged rhetoric. While the Left had ramped up its activism, it proved no match for the Right. Notably, in the key targeted demographics of the Religious Right, President Bush improved his 2000 performance by small but significant margins. His standing with white evangelical voters increased from 72 to 78 percent and Catholic voters from 47 to 52 percent. These national shifts were even more pronounced in swing states like Ohio, where a state referendum on same-sex marriage brought large numbers of socially conservative voters to the polls to vote against same-sex marriage and, at the same time, for the Republican ticket. “I see people marching like a holy army to the voting booth,” Pastor Rod Parsley told his 12,000-member evangelical church in Columbus. “I see the Holy Spirit anointing you as you vote for life, as you vote for marriage, as you vote for the pulpit!” The call to “defend” marriage from the LGBTQ rights movement clearly resonated, as Ohio Catholics rallied to the Republican ticket. Thousands of Bush campaign field workers dispersed to Catholic churches across the state, making sure they were registered to vote and motivated to do so. Their impressive ground game succeeded in getting conservative congregations to the polls. On election day, Bush broadened his share of the Ohio Catholic vote from 50 to 55 percent. Notably, that gain of 172,000 votes was more than his 130,000-vote margin of victory in a pivotal state.10
While the Religious Right proved to be a vital part of the Republican coalition, many observers exaggerated the election returns as a mandate for their agenda. In particular, some pundits pointed to National Election Pool (NEP) exit polling that suggested some 22 percent of voters claimed “moral values” were more important to them than any other issue. GOP strategists seized on the poll as a sign of success, arguing that 80 percent of these “values voters” chose the Republican ticket. Yet the data were not so straightforward, and the Republican argument that the election demonstrated a new “moral values” mandate was overblown. As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center noted, the “moral values” answer ranked high in the exit polling because it was an attractive and ambiguous catchall. Combining separate categories like “terrorism” and “the Iraq war” as a single “national security” category, for instance, would have represented 34 percent of respondents; likewise, a broad “economic” category would have taken 33 percent. Despite such analysis, prominent social conservatives still spun the results their own way. “President Bush now has a mandate to affect policy that will promote a more decent society, through both politics and the law,” argued William Bennett. “Now is the time to begin our long, national cultural renewal.” 11
To the frustration of the Religious Right, however, Bush moved away from their agenda after the election and instead signaled that his priority would be to focus on the privatization of Social Security. “I earned capital in this campaign, political capital,” the president noted after his reelection, “and now I intend to spend it.” Bush devoted the early months of 2005 to shoring up support for privatizing the New Deal program, devoting much of his State of the Union address to the proposal and then holding a series of public events to persuade voters. The more they heard about the idea, however, the less they liked it. Gallup reported that disapproval of the president’s handling of Social Security actually increased as he pitched the plan, from 48 to 64 percent over the first half of the year. As the proposal stalled in Congress, it seemed clear that the president had indeed spent most of the political capital he acquired in the campaign. The Religious Right, furious that Bush had devoted his energies to Social Security instead of a federal marriage amendment, refused to be ignored again. “Business as usual isn’t going to cut it, where the GOP rides to victory by espousing traditional family values and then turns around and rewards the liberals in its ranks,” asserted Robert Knight of Concerned Women for America. “If the GOP wants to expand and govern effectively, it can’t play both sides of the fence anymore. It needs a coherent message, which came through loud and clear in the election.” 12
Religious conservatives soon found a cause in the case of Terri Schiavo. The Florida woman had collapsed in 1990 and entered what physicians called a “persistent vegetative state.” After several years with no signs of improvement, her husband Michael Schiavo petitioned to have his wife finally taken off the artificial system of life support. But her parents, devout Catholics, argued that such actions were violations of their family’s faith and fought him in court. They enlisted the support of pro-life activists and sympathetic politicians like Florida governor Jeb Bush, the president’s brother. Their protests in Terri Schiavo’s name transformed an isolated family dispute into a national political controversy. In March 2005, Florida courts authorized Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tubes that had been keeping his wife alive for the previous fifteen years. Republicans swiftly intervened. Congress passed a special law that required her case to be reviewed once more by the federal courts, which Bush then signed in a dramatic, late-night ceremony.13
While the Schiavo case energized the Religious Right, the government’s intervention served to alienate even larger numbers. An ABC News poll showed that Americans supported Michael Schiavo’s position, 63 percent to 28 percent. They also opposed congressional involvement in the family’s dispute, 70 percent to 27 percent. Notably, even 54 percent of self-described conservatives and 61 percent of Republicans supported the husband’s decision to end life support. Many in the party saw the entire incident as evidence of the Religious Right’s exaggerated influence. “This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy,” argued Representative Chris Shays, a moderate Republican from Connecticut. “There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them.” 14
Hurricane Katrina
In many ways, Bush’s embrace of th
e Religious Right in the middle years of his administration undercut his efforts at establishing a new vision of “compassionate conservatism” in America. For liberals impressed by the inroads Bush had made on issues like the AIDS initiative and the faith-based initiative, Bush suddenly seemed like a traditional culture warrior who could not be trusted. But there were costs inside Bush’s own party, too. Libertarians had hoped that Bush would reduce the role of government in Americans’ lives, but his embrace of social conservatism meant that the federal government was taking an active role in what struck them as entirely private decisions—whether to have a child, whom to marry, how to die on their own terms. While the Bush administration alienated those voters by seeming in these instances to be too eager to intervene in the lives of ordinary Americans, it soon wound up alienating even more voters by appearing to be too reluctant to intervene in other cases. This was especially true in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans.
In late August 2005, Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. A massive category-5 storm, it ravaged a wide stretch of the coastline, causing destruction from Texas to central Florida. But New Orleans was particularly hit hard, as it lay in the path of the hurricane when it was at its fiercest. The levees that protected the city from the surrounding seas ultimately failed, and soon large sections were underwater. In the end, Hurricane Katrina proved to be the most expensive natural disaster in American history, with property damage estimated at $108 billion. It was one of the deadliest hurricanes in American history as well, with 1,833 deaths attributed to the storm and the subsequent floods.15
In a larger sense, another victim of Hurricane Katrina was the image of “compassionate conservatism” itself. Early in his administration, Bush had tried to convince Americans that their basic needs could be handled by local governments and private charities, with the federal government merely offering funding and direction. But the hurricane—and, more important, the federal government’s inept and inert response in the weeks that followed—convinced many Americans that there was an important role to be played by the government in protecting its citizens during a disaster and caring for their needs directly in its aftermath.16
The hurricane had been a natural disaster, but not a complete surprise. Federal agencies like the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center provided early warnings that the storm would be a massive catastrophe. As a video later released made clear, officials at these agencies alerted the White House before the storm that the costs would be immense. Specifically, they warned that the levees in New Orleans could fail, leading to catastrophic destruction there. Despite these warnings, leaders at the local, state, and federal levels proved to be badly unprepared. The Democratic mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic governor of Louisiana both were ineffective leaders during the crisis, which was only made worse when much of the New Orleans Police Department abandoned the city. As the region was overwhelmed by the massive destruction of homes, a large number of deaths, and widespread flooding, power outages, and food shortages, local leaders simply froze, unsure of what they could do.17
Hurricane victims huddled inside the New Orleans Superdome, which had been designated as a relief center. But it was understaffed and lacked basic supplies like food and water. Without power or backup generators, it had no air conditioning or running water. Those who had hoped to find relief in the Superdome soon came to feel it was a prison. Despite the horrible conditions there, National Guardsmen refused to let them leave for days, afraid that they would be swept away in the floodwaters outside. A state of panic set in, with rumors of rapes and even a suicide sweeping through the Superdome, with no sign of relief in sight. The siege mentality was made all the clearer as policemen from the New Orleans suburb of Gretna established a roadblock on the bridge between the city and their suburb. Residents and tourists in New Orleans who tried to flee the chaos of the city were turned back at gunpoint. According to multiple witnesses, the Gretna police threatened to shoot anyone who approached them.18
As the situation worsened in New Orleans, the cable news networks broadcast scenes of devastation and destruction across the nation. Four days after the storm, Americans were stunned to see dead bodies still lying in the street or floating in the floodwaters. The Superdome, once a symbol of American achievement, now seemed like a Third World nightmare. And yet the federal government was nowhere to be seen. Even field reporters for Fox News, the conservative network that routinely backed the Bush administration, were outraged at what they saw. Prominent figures there, such as anchor Shepard Smith and journalist Geraldo Rivera, reported live from scenes of destruction that clearly left them in a state of shock.19
As the nation watched reports like these, they were stunned to see that the Bush administration was essentially doing nothing. As the hurricane hit, the president stayed isolated at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. After two days there, he finally flew east, but to Washington rather than the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast. On his trip back to the White House, Bush had Air Force One fly low over the region so he could look at the damage along the way. The White House released photos of the president doing this, in an effort to show that he was concerned, but the imagery only made it seem that the president was even more detached and distant.20
Bush remained unengaged for days, believing that the officials he had placed in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had the situation in hand. But those officials lacked the training, the skills, and even the will to lead the massive rescue and cleanup operation that was mandated by the storm. During the Clinton years, FEMA had gained a strong reputation as an efficient and effective responder to a variety of disasters, including several massive hurricanes and the 1995 domestic terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. After 9/11, however, Bush made the formerly independent agency part of the new Department of Homeland Security. That massive new department, however, was concerned first and foremost with preventing man-made disasters from acts of terrorism, making FEMA’s focus on natural disasters seem secondary. The agency’s funding was reduced, with a number of key functions farmed out to private contractors; as a result, a number of longtime employees soon left.
The greatest signs of FEMA’s reduced importance in the Bush administration were the men the president chose to lead it. Originally, he placed his campaign manager Joe Allbaugh in charge, despite his lack of experience in emergency management. In 2003, Allbaugh was replaced by Michael Brown, another friend from Republican politics with even less experience. Indeed, before FEMA, Brown’s last job had been as a lawyer for the International Arabian Horse Association. Not surprisingly, he proved wholly unqualified at the new position. Brown dithered during the early days of Katrina and, in a live interview, claimed to have been unaware of the suffering in the Superdome, despite the nonstop coverage on cable news. The furor over Brown’s incompetence was matched by new outrage over Bush when the president enthusiastically praised him in a public appearance: “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job!” 21
Bush’s standing in the polls showed how much damage the storm had done to his presidency. In the aftermath of 9/11, when Gallup asked if Bush had strong qualities as a leader, Americans said yes by an overwhelming margin of 83–11. Four years later, in the wake of Katrina, the numbers had dropped to 48–49. Bush’s approval ratings, which had been at about 45 percent approval right before the storm, steadily sank in the aftermath. They rose briefly in late 2005, before dropping again into the low 30s by the spring of 2006.22
Blowback
As Bush’s standing plummeted, liberal voices found a broader audience. The Daily Show continued to score top ratings, with one of its star correspondents, Stephen Colbert, spinning off his own successful Comedy Central show in October 2005. Much as The Daily Show was designed as a spoof of the straight-news programs of cable news networks, The Colbert Report lampooned their prime-time opinion shows. Performing as a conservative blowhard modeled on Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, Colbert sarcastically skewered cable media pundi
ts. In his debut episode, the host offered a new term to describe the figures he mocked: “truthiness.” “Truthiness is sort of what you want to be true, as opposed to what the facts support,” he noted in an interview. “Truthiness is a truth larger than the facts that would comprise it—if you cared about facts, which you don’t, if you care about truthiness.” George W. Bush, to Colbert’s character, was the exemplar of “truthiness.” Mocking the administration’s arguments for invading Iraq, for instance, the host noted: “Doesn’t taking Saddam out feel like the right thing?” The term quickly caught on, and “truthiness” was chosen as the 2006 “Word of the Year” by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.23
Fault Lines Page 35
