Irony

Eight years ago, Grover Norquist explained the agenda for the Bush Republican Party in these famous words: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." In accomplishing that goal, the Bush administration has been spectacularly successful.

New Orleans is their bathtub.

The disaster of Katrina in 2005 was one of the most horrible examples of the incompetence of government that has ever been known. The storm's approach was well documented, its danger was well known, and one of our most cherished American cities was destroyed by inattention -- and not accidentally, either, this was the perfect application of Norquist's principle.

We are reading that the hurricane approaching New Orleans now is twice as big as Katrina, they're calling it "the mother of all storms," the "storm of the century." Gustav is still out at sea, gathering strength, and these things are unpredictable but it looks to be headed straight for the same stretch of Gulf Coast that Katrina hit. Do you think we have fortified the levees for a Category Five storm? Do you think we are prepared for a disaster there? Did we learn anything from the Katrina experience? Ah, the trick there is in the word "we." Yes, "we" learned something, "we the people," but our government did not, it has been busy flailing in the bathtub, and has nearly expired.

People use the word "ironic" wrong all the time, but this is it: it is excellently ironic that the Republic convention is going to share the front pages of the nation's newspapers with this reminder of the consequences of their political philosophy. They should be proud, but I have the feeling they will not want the voters to draw a short straight line between the coming disaster and their party's policies.

I'm curious to see how they'll play this. They talked about re-scheduling the convention, but apparently that's not going to happen. Now they're saying that President Bush won't attend, because of the storm -- the collective sigh of relief could have created a storm of its own over the Twin Cities. Why would a hurricane affect his decision to give a speech at the party convention? I guess it's supposed to look like he cares this time.

Somebody said there was talk of turning the Republican convention into a telethon to raise money for the hurricane's victims. I hope they do that! I hope they come on the TV screen, one after the other, and tell us how concerned they are about those poor black people down there who have lost their homes. Irony irony irony. You know how Karl Rove has said he runs all of his campaigns as if people were watching television with the sound turned down; this year they'll be watching shots of sorrowful (but perfectly groomed) talking heads interspersed with familiar scenes of chaos and destruction. How's that going to look, with the sound turned down? The message will be, we've been running things for eight years and this is what you get, but don't blame us.

Irony is a tough concept. Let's say there will be irony when a political party drowns the government in a bathtub and then expresses sadness and sympathy for the drowning victims. Irony-deficiency is sometimes seen as a defining feature of conservatism, but the American people are perfectly capable of appreciating irony. We get a laugh out of hypocrites who try to talk out of both sides of their mouth. Let them come on the television with their flag lapel pins and furrow their well-powdered foreheads in significant expressions of sympathy for those brave souls who have lost loved ones etcetera etcetera. We'll watch, we won't actually laugh because it's not funny, New Orleans was a city with a lot of character, good music, good food, a cool way of talking, we won't be laughing but we will note the irony of these expressions. There will be some who miss it, some who will believe the expressions of sympathy are sincere, and who knows, maybe there will be enough of those to make the November election a close one.