Katrina has done lasting damage to Bush

Hurricane Katrina's flood waters have long since receded. The human toll and political wreckage wrought by the killer storm continue to haunt President Bush almost a year later.

As the president and still-reeling Gulf Coast residents prepared to mark Katrina's anniversary, political experts say that dismay over Bush's response to the disaster continues to undermine public confidence in his managerial abilities.

"It was Katrina that broke the sense that the Republicans could govern well," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in an interview. Bush "was still seen before Katrina as a relatively strong leader, and somewhere in this process there was a substantial erosion because Americans were shocked" by the government's failure to perform.

Bush has never appeared comfortable talking about the catastrophe, and the storm's continuing ability to bedevil him makes it a domestic counterpart to the Iraq war — a setback that fundamentally altered perceptions of a presidency.

The White House's Katrina relief effort seemed off-kilter from the start, said Gingrich, a Republican. Citing Bush's initial praise for then-Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, Gingrich said that "from that point on, people just look at us and see 'Brownie, you're doing a great job,' and they just think we're not in touch with reality."

Bush waited for two days — days filled with television images of anarchy and desperation — before inspecting the storm area as Air Force One, returning from Waco, Texas, swooped low over New Orleans. He saw a surreal scene of burning buildings and submerged neighborhoods.

"President Bush seemed to be far above the fray and didn't really understand the scope of the damage," said Daniel Aldrich, a Tulane University professor who is researching the government's reaction to the disaster.

A year later, Democrats as well as many Republicans view the administration's Katrina response as a case study in bureaucratic failure. Among the causes cited: a detached White House high command, a FEMA team hobbled by political cronyism, and a president who oscillated between an emotional desire to aid storm victims and a conservative ideology that is leery of federal bailouts.

In ways large and small, Bush is still paying for the inadequate storm response.