[Mb-civic] For Bush, a Deepening Divide - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

For Bush, a Deepening Divide
Katrina Crisis Brings No Repeat of 9/11 Bipartisanship

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A19

When terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans came together in 
grief and resolve, rallying behind President Bush in an extraordinary 
show of national unity. But when Hurricane Katrina hit last week, the 
opposite occurred, with Americans dividing along sharply partisan lines 
in their judgment of the president's and the federal government's response.

The starkly different verdicts on Bush's stewardship of the two biggest 
crises of his presidency underscore the deepening polarization of the 
electorate that has occurred on his watch. This gaping divide has left 
the president with no reservoir of good will among his political 
opponents at a critical moment of national need and has touched off a 
fresh debate about whether he could have done anything to prevent it.

To his critics, Bush is now reaping what he has sown. Their case against 
him goes as follows: Facing a divided nation, the president has eschewed 
unity in both his governing strategy and his political blueprint. These 
opponents argue that he has favored confrontation over conciliation with 
the Democrats while favoring a set of policies aimed at deepening 
support among his conservative base at the expense of ideas that might 
produce bipartisan consensus and broader approval among the voters. His 
allies and advisers, while acknowledging that polarization has worsened 
during the past five years, say the opposition party bears the brunt of 
responsibility. Democrats, by this reckoning, have rebuffed Bush's 
efforts at bipartisanship, put up a wall to ideas that once enjoyed some 
support on their side, and, even in the current crisis along the Gulf 
Coast, are seeking to score political points rather than joining hands 
with the president to speed the recovery and relief to the victims.

Wherever reality lies between these mutual recriminations, the path from 
post-9/11 unity to the rancor and finger-pointing in the aftermath of 
Katrina's fury charts a clear deterioration in political consensus in 
the United States and a growing willingness to interpret events through 
a partisan prism. It is a problem that now appears destined to follow 
Bush through the final years of his presidency -- a clear failure of his 
2000 campaign promise to be a "uniter, not a divider."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601687.html
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