Would the aftermath of Katrina been as bad if Bush wasn't in office?

[Friz]

Would the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina been as bad if Bush wasn't in office?  That is, would just as many lives have been destroyed? Would people still be forced to live in their own filth?

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Yes.

[Sam Spade]

If a President had been willing to place the military into the outside of New Orleans the day of the hurricane (or day after the hurricane), with orders to control the city in two days, it would have been better.  I would have done that, but mainly because I knew what the rest of New Orleans was, outside the touristy areas.

Otherwise, no.  People seem to not understand what exactly was necessary to keep order in that area of the world.

[Sam Spade]

Also, I would have forced people to evacuate, unlike leaving them in the Superdome, which was (and still is) a stupid idea.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

If a President had been willing to place the military into the outside of New Orleans the day of the hurricane (or day after the hurricane), with orders to control the city in two days, it would have been better.  I would have done that, but mainly because I knew what the rest of New Orleans was, outside the touristy areas.

Otherwise, no.  People seem to not understand what exactly was necessary to keep order in that area of the world.

Well this and your other posting illustrate a couple things.   The Asshole Mayor wouldn't uses the means available (I believe a fleet of buses?) to force an evacuation, and the Governor didn't help matters with her attitude of we can handle it.   

Then let's talk about the devastation that was caused from years of under-funding the Corp of Engineers.

Other than his asshole "Brownie" comment well documented here, GW did nothing different than any other President would have done.

[Willy Woz]

No. Bush caused Katrina. He is the devil.

[minionofmidas]

This was not the kind of desaster a city was equipped to handle, and yes, indeed, any safe and sane president would have recognized so before desaster struck. Nagin bears much the smallest fault of anybody in charge, but my opinion of Blanco certainly never left the 0 mark again afterwards. She seemed to care more about White shopowners' right to shoot starving Blacks than anything else.

However, the question is not "if someone sane had been in office instead of Bush". It is "if Bush wasn't in office". And given the mood the country obviously was in in 2004 - it reelected George Frigging W Bush after all, knowing full well what to expect - I find it impossible to imagine that he could have lost to anybody not stark barking insane.
Therefore, I vote yes.

[dead0man]

Of course it would have.  If we're handing out pieces of the "at fault" pie, Nagin deserves at least a third of it.  Give a quarter of it to the governor and most of the rest of it to the people of New Orleans themselves.  Bush and the Federal govt can take the rest.  I was in NO less than 2 weeks before Katrina hit, it was a piece of crap then.  I was there back in the mid 90's, it was a piece of crap then too.  NO is a sh**t hole, it was a sh**t hole and it will always be a sh**t hole.  The corruption in politics down there makes Chicago look good.

The only good thing about the place is the food.  I love me some boiled mud bugs!

[Padfoot]

The damage done during the actual storm would have been the same.  I think more lives would have been saved post storm if Bush hadn't been in office.  I think the reaction to the aftermath would have been swifter.

[opebo]

The non-poors in New Orleans hardly suffered at all.  The cause of the suffering there was america's genocidal economic policy for decades, even its entire history.  Bush is merely a typical representative of this policy, only a little worse than the rest.

[John Dibble]

Impossible to say - the question doesn't give us enough details. For instance, it could have been just as bad or worse if someone else had been in office. On the other hand, had someone with experience in dealing with natural disasters had been in office it might have been handled much better.

[Wakie]

It depends on who you replace him with.

If you put Al Gore, John Kerry, or Bill Clinton in his place then I think things definitely wouldn't have been as bad if for no other reason than the fact that the local officials were fellow Democrats and there wouldn't have been political bickering.

Now if you put in ... actually it is hard to come up with someone who could have handled it worse than Bush.

[JSojourner]

Haven't you heard?  "Those people" are actually better off.

[Smash255]

No.  troops would have been closer, they would have had more National Guard troops in the region because they wouldn't have been in Iraq.  Another President would have been more involved in the process.  Also another President would not have hired a lackee with no experience other than being a lackee to head of FEMA.

[Stranger in a strange land]

Katrina would have been bad no matter what, but Bush's incompetence, callousness, laziness, and his tendency to reward loyalty rather than performance made the situation much worse than it had to be. That's not to say that the state and city government didn't fail: they did. But Bush failed too and therefore deserves blame.

[Brandon H]

Depends on if whoever would have been in Chertoff (Homeland Security) and Brown (FEMA)'s positions would have been any better. According to Brown, had Ridge been there instead of Chertoff he would have done a better job.

Of course had the levees not been pieces of s***, the situation wouldn't had been nearly as bad.

[J. J.]

First, to those people who suggested that Bush should have put the Army in before Katrina struck, are you f@#&ing nuts? 

A.  Katrina was not Godzilla; the Army couldn't shoot at it.  The Army would have been the victim, as some National Guardsmen were when they billeted at their armory in the 9th Ward; they ended up on the third floor, trying to dry out what they salvaged the flooded.  This would have added victims.

B.  They were trying to get everybody out of the city; trying to take even a few hundred people in, with equipment, by ground would have caused even more delays, as all the roads were outbound.

Second, you had something like 25,000 people left, some of who wouldn't leave or that due to disability, couldn't leave.  There is no way to force that.

Three, Ray Nagan bears a large share of the problems.

1.  Nagan could have used public resources, such as the buses, and a train that was offered, to  take out some of the ambulatory people that didn't have a car.  On that, he failed.  That would not have solved the problem, but it would have lessened it.

2.  Nagan had enough people there, police, city employees, to track and relay reports on the conditions at the refugee centers, even if they had to do it by foot.  That could have been set up prior to the storm.

Neither Blanco nor Bush were perfect, but the guy who could have been the first responder was locked in the upper stories of a hotel during the storm.  That was Ray Nagan.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Yes - Nagin and Blanco were WAY more to blame than Bush.

[Silent Hunter]

Accidentally voted "No" by mistake.

Since this was a multi-level failure, I don't think it would have made any difference at all.

[Josh/Devilman88]

Yes

[Smash255]

Yes - Nagin and Blanco were WAY more to blame than Bush.

The resources at the local and state level were simply not there, especially in a city as poor as New Orleans and a state as poor as Louisiana.  they made mistakes, major ones, no question.  However, Bush was the one who had the resources to actually do something, and he dropped the ball.  This was compounded immensely by the fact he hired a Republican crony as head of FEMA, who had no experience and only got the job because he was a Bushie.

[Keystone Phil]

Yes - Nagin and Blanco were WAY more to blame than Bush.

The resources at the local and state level were simply not there, especially in a city as poor as New Orleans and a state as poor as Louisiana.  they made mistakes, major ones, no question.  However, Bush was the one who had the resources to actually do something, and he dropped the ball. 

Bush was supposed to deploy those school buses, right?

[Smash255]

Yes - Nagin and Blanco were WAY more to blame than Bush.

The resources at the local and state level were simply not there, especially in a city as poor as New Orleans and a state as poor as Louisiana.  they made mistakes, major ones, no question.  However, Bush was the one who had the resources to actually do something, and he dropped the ball. 

Bush was supposed to deploy those school buses, right?

First of all I said both Blanco & Nagin made major mistakes.  Secondly we have no idea if these buses were ever operational in the 1st place.  Not to mention the issues of who would actually drive these buses, who you pick to evacuate on the buses (as only a very small portion of those stuck in N.O would have been able to use them).

[Keystone Phil]

Yes - Nagin and Blanco were WAY more to blame than Bush.

The resources at the local and state level were simply not there, especially in a city as poor as New Orleans and a state as poor as Louisiana.  they made mistakes, major ones, no question.  However, Bush was the one who had the resources to actually do something, and he dropped the ball. 

Bush was supposed to deploy those school buses, right?

First of all I said both Blanco & Nagin made major mistakes.  Secondly we have no idea if these buses were ever operational in the 1st place.  Not to mention the issues of who would actually drive these buses, who you pick to evacuate on the buses (as only a very small portion of those stuck in N.O would have been able to use them).

Who to pick to get on the buses? I think there were a few people left at the Superdome.