US Features
Bush heads back into Katrina's political storm
By Anne K Walters
Aug 28, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - On the one-year anniversary of one of the most devastating storms in US history, President George W Bush Monday returned to the site of the hurricane that not only wrecked a historic city but also proved a disaster for his political image.

Bush was to spend the day in Mississippi before heading to New Orleans for dinner. Tuesday marks the actual day Hurricane Katrina made landfall, slamming into the Gulf Coast, killing 1,815 people in Louisiana and Mississippi and destroying 125-billon dollars in property.

Beyond the physical damage, which still lingers in moldy piles of rubble, it left Americans questioning the ability of their government to respond to disasters and spurred a national discussion about race and poverty.

Images of New Orleans' primarily poor, black residents stranded for days after the storm, many on the roofs of their homes, tens of thousands at a stadium without food and water, severely damaged Bush's reputation.

According to a New York Times/CBS News poll published Monday, those images have not receded with the floodwaters.

In fact, they've gotten worse. Right after the disaster, 48 per cent of those questioned said they disapproved of Bush's response to the hurricane. The current survey puts the number at 51 per cent.

The dissatisfaction is not limited to Bush's political opponents. According to the poll, even Bush supporters remain concerned about the handling of the disaster.

Bush has acknowledged the government's failure. In his weekly radio address Saturday, the president conceded that both federal and local governments were 'unprepared to respond to such an extraordinary disaster.'

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) drew the brunt of the criticism, and its then-director Michael Brown lost his job over the agency's inability to quickly respond after New Orleans suffered massive flooding.

Bush initially praised the agency's work with embarrassing kudos directed at Brown.

A year ago, Bush also seemed aloof from the suffering of the region's residents, reluctant to head back to Washington in the middle of his vacation and surveying the damage from Air Force One in a flyover on his way there. The image contrasted sharply with his view of himself as a compassionate, hands-on leader.

When Bush arrives in New Orleans, he will find a city that remains in ruins on the one-year anniversary. Only about half of the population of 450,000 has returned and large swaths of the city remain a ghost town.

When images of poor, black hurricane victims in New Orleans filled television screens last year, the poverty that had made it difficult for them to evacuate the city before the storm came under the microscope. One year later, many of those poor residents remain scattered around the United States, without the resources to return.

The residents that have returned to New Orleans are frequently wealthy and white, drastically altering the demographics of a city that used to be two-thirds black - and provoking black Mayor Ray Nagin to announce he would make sure the jazz city remains 'chocolate.'

Bush was to meet with Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour on Monday, to discuss rebuilding the state's 125 miles of destroyed coastline. The region has received nearly 17 billion dollars in grants to help residents rebuild homes, part of 118 billion dollars in federal funds provided for the displaced, for rebuilding and for jump starting the region's recovery.

But the influx of cash has not been entirely positive, and official investigations have revealed fraud and misuse of funds for luxuries like televisions.

The president's visit was to focus heavily on progress in the region, but the White House acknowledged that 'the one-year anniversary is not a finish line.'

Observers wonder whether the region will ever return to its pre- hurricane state. Some predict New Orleans' future will be that of a much smaller, less economically and racially diverse city.