What if Katrina occurs a year earlier?

[Mr. Morden]

Suppose Hurricane Katrina had hit the Gulf Coast *exactly* one year earlier, making landfall on August 29th, 2004, rather than August 29th, 2005.  Keep in mind, the 2004 Republican National Convention in NYC began on August *30th*, just one day later.  Would the government's response have been any different in this situation?  Would it swing the election to Kerry?

[Mr. Morden]

One other thing about Katrina being a year earlier is that Ridge was SoHS in '04, rather than Chertoff.  I don't know if that would have changed the quality of the government's response one way or the other, but it's another factor to consider.

[Mr. Morden]

I guess the question is, how much of the bungled Katrina response was simply a function of the Bush administration not trying hard enough?  Winfield argues that if Katrina had happened just before the '04 election, the administration would have made sure that the Katrina response went well, so it wouldn't be such a political albatross for Bush.  But what if, instead of the Bushies simply not having tried hard enough, the Katrina problems were a result of one or more of these factors?:

1) The Bush administration is simply incompetent when it comes to dealing with disasters like this, so it doesn't matter how hard they try.  They'll screw it up regardless.

2) The Katrina disaster was just so extraordinary that no administration--nobody--could have done a "good" job of responding to it.  No matter what anyone did, it was bound to end up as a fiasco, so Bush had no chance of coming out looking good.  The fact that it was an impossible situation doesn't lead the public to give Bush a pass though, because it's impossible to *prove* that the situation was hopeless.

3) The bungled response was mostly due to state and local officials, which Bush has no control over.  But of course, this distinction gets lost on the public, so he gets blamed regardless.

If you believe that either 1, 2, or 3 is true (or some combination thereof), then the timing of Katrina wouldn't be able to make the response any better.  Bush is simply incapable of having handled things better, even if he *really* wanted to.

OTOH, if you believe the problem was that Bush didn't care enough--it wasn't enough of a priority for him--then of course having it occur right before the election would have had a big impact on how well the government response to the storm went.

I would assume that most Bush defenders believe either #2 or #3 is true.....and that most Bush opponents believe either #1 (the "Bush is incompetent" scenario) or believe the "Bush doesn't care, so yes, he would have responded better if it happened before the election" scenario.