Katrina's aftermath: a broken civic covenant

A dinner guest, a visiting journalist from Malaysia, provided a welcome, neutral perspective on the human tragedy in the Gulf states and New Orleans.

He was completely mystified as day after day passed last week with no coherent response to the suffering. Here was a natural disaster on the homeland of the richest, mightiest nation on Earth, and virtually nothing was happening.

His benchmark for U.S. abilities was the tsunami last December and the relief effort led by American military forces. He was deeply grateful for the assistance his part of the world received and equally impressed by its efficient delivery. Our guest was delighted to learn the symbol of America's capacity and caring last winter, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is based 20 miles north.

In the midst of plenty, he was also deeply puzzled. How could the rescue and relief efforts be so slow at home?

The question will linger into the 2006 elections in a fundamental way.

Before Hurricane Katrina, I looked forward to the congressional campaigns with a perverse political-science curiosity. With the Iraq war going badly and the public increasingly disenchanted by President Bush and his leadership of the war, how would the Republican Party change the discussion? Instead of Iraq, would it be the curse of meth, another foreign crisis, or more predictably, a loop back to the culture wars — guns, gays, abortion and religion?

A killer storm changed all that. A shift in conversation is coming, but not in the direction the White House and GOP-led Congress will like or control.

I expect the election to turn on issues of fundamental competence of the president, his administration and Congress.

The Republican Party enjoys the ideological perquisites of being in charge, but it appears to be wholly incapable, or more accurately, uninterested in governing. The party of fiscal conservatism has been running up deficits for five years, including the war, and paying for it all with a credit card.

Where did the money go? Tax cuts and an unpopular war. One can get away with that as long as nothing happens to expose what is being ignored.

Gulf-state politicians of all stripes saw money that should have beefed up levees and flood control filched from budgets. The trauma in New Orleans exposed an underclass otherwise out of sight. Katrina revealed a layer of poverty and desperation for all to see: those literally left behind by public policy and the economy.

Concern for those trapped by poverty? That is so 1960s.

The same administration that cannot get bullet-proof vests and armored vehicles to the troops in Iraq cannot get water and emergency rations to the victims of a natural disaster. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army can do it, but not the federal government under current management.

One senses their energy is spent groping for a zippy message or zinger of a theme that assigns blame someplace else. Witness the presidential shoulder shrugs intended to convey a sense of wonderment, as in who could have known?

A scant 350 years ago or so, a fellow named Thomas Hobbes explained what will transpire next year at the polls. People who invested their trust and power in incompetent authorities will snatch it back. We all give up power by the boatload with the understanding our leaders will protect us, and provide stability that allows us to work to better our lives.

The incompetence of the Bush administration violated that civic covenant and failed to provide for public safety. The license to engage in all kinds of self-serving political acts — including starting a war — comes with an ancient contract to protect the vulnerable.

Katrina revealed a White House unconcerned about making sure things worked and a Republican Congress that refused to hold the executive branch accountable.

The people who empower the sovereign will assign the authority elsewhere.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com