by Dane Roberts
Daily Lobo columnist
Let's say I landed in the United States two weeks ago, just as the tragic damage done by Hurricane Katrina was becoming apparent.
Let's also say that I depended on America's newspaper of record, The New York Times, for all my news and opinion. What would I have seen?
First, I would have looked at horrifying pictures of catastrophic damage. I would have seen visual tokens of unimaginable human suffering.
I would have read about a region so totally overwhelmed by the force of nature that human lives were cut short - possibly by the thousands - and living humans were pushed to the limits of physical and emotional stress.
I would have read some stories of heroism and generosity, several stories of helplessness and frustration - from stranded citizens to impotent government officials - and many stories of human depravity, from thugs firing on rescue helicopters to gang rapes in a city of chaos.
Finally, I would have read the opinions of some of the nation's most respected voices: the Times' opinion columnists. In the midst of such unprecedented American tragedy, what wisdom would I have heard from them?
Very little.
Like most of the rest of liberal opinion, the unanimous and almost single message was: President Bush's federal government failed miserably and people died as a result. That was the refrain of a choir of at least five Times columnists.
And it's an opinion I wouldn't dispute - the federal government's failures were many and heartbreaking - but it seems incredibly myopic, self-serving, and small-minded to focus exclusively on that single aspect of what is, in fact, a much larger story.
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The little wisdom I would have heard, in fact, would have come from the token opposition voices at the Times.
David Brooks, the newspaper's one conservative writer, started offering sensible solutions for the problem of urban poverty that was at the root of so much of the suffering in New Orleans. Any rebuilt city, he said, cannot re-create large swaths of low-income housing. Mixed-income neighborhoods would be essential to break the cultural patterns that result in generational poverty.
Starting this kind of forward-looking dialogue seems to me a humane and appropriate response to what happened in Louisiana. An even more thought-provoking response came from the newspaper's very independent John Tierney.
Perhaps none of this would have happened, he said, if we'd treat floods the way we treat fire. Because homeowners pay for private fire insurance, both they and the insurance companies have a big incentive to prevent fires. The dual pressure of these constituencies has resulted in strict building codes, good fire departments and a huge reduction in the frequency of fires, which used to be a serious problem for cities.
The federal government, on the other hand, is the provider of flood insurance, which it subsidizes, and it controls both the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA, the agencies responsible for flood prevention and response.
With subsidized insurance, people build in places they shouldn't and probably never would otherwise. And with no regular pressure from private insurance companies and premium-paying citizens, jobs like maintaining levees are all too easily put on the back burner.
Of course, writing about fire insurance isn't nearly as sexy as accusing the president of murder, but here again, compared to his liberal colleagues, Tierney is infinitely more sensible.
Had the New York Times been my only source of information, then, I would have come away with the impression that liberals are filled with venom for the current administration but bereft of constructive ideas. And maybe that wouldn't have been totally inaccurate.
The anger coming from the left is understandable, especially when it seems that suffering could have been prevented. But the univocal and blinding focus on Bush and his administration seems disproportionate and conveniently made possible by prestorm approval ratings that were his lowest yet.
To make a larger point, a more measured response would acknowledge that pretty much no one was prepared for a disaster of this magnitude, and we probably never will be able to adequately respond to the worst that nature can serve up. We may not have the imagination for it.
