Jim Griffin
Katrina Will Blow Government Left
By Jim Griffin
RealMoney.com Contributor
9/12/2005 12:11 PM EDT
URL: thestreet.com
Market Commentary
President Bush's ambitious reform agenda may fall by the wayside as the cost of rebuilding New Orleans strains an already stressed federal budget.
There may be real danger if our national focus becomes so self-centered that we take our eye off the global ball.
The consequences and implications of Hurricane Katrina reveal themselves in a riveting and unrelenting progression. Human, political, economic, environmental, public health and welfare, law enforcement, engineering, media -- what you see depends in part on where you sit. Each specialist employs his or her own particular scalpel to slice through the knot of issues presented by the storm and its aftermath. In doing so, each risks missing the so-called big picture.
Katrina's big picture isn't likely to come into focus for a long, long time. It may not be until future historians, writers and artists are able to provide their perspectives that we get a holistic view of exactly what happened to America in the late summer of 2005.
For those of us who didn't live through the Great Depression, and perhaps even for those who did, our grasp of the meaning of such an event is distilled through artistic interpretation such as Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The diaspora of New Orleans residents today harks back to Oklahoma's Dust Bowl and the drift of so many of its people to California. The suffering of the Southland may not be fully comprehended until the successors to Caldwell's Tobacco Road and Wright's Native Son are written.
Katrina has brought forth recollections of the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927. More than a million people then were left homeless, many thousands of whom chose to leave the delta forever, drifting north to Chicago in a dispersion that continues to influence the American experience to this day.
The Web site of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration still lists the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 8, 1900, as "the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States." It estimates that more than 8,000 people were killed by that storm. Katrina's toll, unfortunately, has not yet been finalized; it may prove to be not only the costliest but also the most murderous catastrophe in our history.
As each of us attempts to comprehend this disaster, we have a natural tendency to "analyze" -- i.e., to think in terms inculcated by our education, training and professional experience. Political, economic, financial, health, public works -- my point, or assertion, is that Katrina can't be understood analytically, at least not yet. All the risk assessments, cost estimates and political or economic analyses, as judged by the most qualified experts, are likely to fall well short of comprehending the seismic impact of this event on American life.
That having been asserted, many of the columnists and commentators that I read or listen to have provided insights that have been useful for me. In his Capital column in The Wall Street Journal, for example, David Wessel argues that "The era of small government is over. Sept. 11 challenged it. Katrina killed it." Or at least set it back for several years: Much of what will need to be done in the aftermath is likely to be accomplished only through or by government -- private charity and heroism notwithstanding.
It seems to me that Katrina will move the center line of American politics leftward, in a setback for (or correction of, depending on your politics) the Reagan revolution. President Bush's ambitious second-term agenda for reforms -- of the tax code and Social Security, of the tort and pension systems -- has struggled in the face of significant resistance. That resistance may now become insuperable as the cost of rebuilding a major American city strains an already stressed federal budget.
Another center line that is likely to move is the one that divides the domestic and international lobes of our national consciousness. Katrina's fallout has banished Iraq from the front pages of newspapers. Outrage that takes the form of "we can help Indonesia and Sri Lanka but we can't come to the aid of New Orleans" isn't likely to recede quickly as the media and ambitious politicians follow the stories of this latter-day American diaspora.
There may be real danger if our national focus becomes so self-centered that we take our eye off the global ball. As the fourth anniversary of Al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. passes, the differences are profound in American reaction to the two events. One common strain of commentary is that Sept. 11 brought us together but Katrina is tearing us apart. To the extent that this perception is valid, it seems to me that there is good reason for the difference.
In one case, the injury -- and the insult -- came from Al Qaeda, against whom we could and did react, thereby giving outward focus to our rage. Mother Nature is beyond retribution, but our rage at the injury and insult nevertheless demands expression, which is likely to take political form for as long as Katrina diaspora stories monopolize our attention. Nothing about this catastrophe has been pretty, and with an election year ahead, it's unlikely to become so soon. |
