In pro wrestling the bad guy usually gets down on his knees at some point, begging the good guy to stop beating on him. The good guy, being good, usually relents, only to be sandbagged by the bad guy as soon as he lets down his guard.

Politics is like that as well. When one politician is saying “don’t play politics” with an issue or event, it usually means that politician is vulnerable and hasn’t come up with a strategy.

The strategy only works when political commentary can be rightly construed as gaming. The Katrina situation is no game, and Bush cannot escape criticism for real and devastating decisions taken by his administration that directly impacted the outcome of Katrina’s landfall.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, “The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana’s coast, only to be opposed by the White House. … In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana’s chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need.”

This is a very complex story of betrayal. Betrayal of half a million Americans living in direct threat of a hurricane-related catastrophe that has now been realized. The tax cuts and Iraq-related budgetary redirections have now come home to roost.

So it is not “playing” politics to insist that Bush be immediately and relentlessly held to account for his direct failings with regard to the Katrina disaster. It is simply good politics. Politics in the interest of America. Politics that aims to right wrongs and prevent further neglect and catastrophe.

It is “playing” politics to simply lie to the American people about what engineers had been telling the whitehouse for years. Bush said on Monday:

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we’re having to deal with it and will,” he said.

Holy shit. This is just about as good as Clinton’s “what the meaning of the word is is”. Bush will say he was talking about breaching (i.e. breaking) the levees, not topping them. Now that’s playing politics. And that’s disgraceful.

Hurricane Katrina