The Texas-sized politics of calamity: Disasters put a spotlight on elected officials’ negligence

The inspect­ing big­wigs’ heli­copter land­ed after cir­cling over a bad­ly flood­ed Sacra­men­to Riv­er delta, with Gov­er­nor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown strid­ing up to the tele­vi­sion cam­eras and declaring:

“My God, this is the worst dis­as­ter to hit Cal­i­for­nia since I became Governor.”

Nat­ur­al and man-made calami­ties can be a dis­as­ter for pres­i­dents, gov­er­nors and may­ors but also, less fre­quent­ly, make their careers.

The deliv­ery of relief is para­mount but so is atti­tude and expres­sion, as Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas dis­cov­ered leav­ing frozen Hous­ton for sun­ny Can­cun last week.

What­ev­er cuts have been made to it, gov­ern­ment is expect­ed to mit­i­gate “acts of God” and the human caused.

When Cruz vot­ed in the Sen­ate against aid to states strick­en by Hur­ri­cane Hugo, Gov­er­nor Chris Christie of New Jer­sey deliv­ered a warn­ing: Com­ing from a coastal state, Cruz would some­day find him­self com­ing hat in hand for help. The day came five years lat­er when Hous­ton was inun­dat­ed by Hur­ri­cane Harvey.

Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, fly­ing high after his 2004 reelec­tion, was brought to earth by the fed­er­al government’s neg­li­gent and dis­or­ga­nized response when the cat­a­stro­phe of Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na hit New Orleans.

He flew over the city, then told his crony, the over­matched FEMA boss Mike Brown: “Brown­ie, you’re doing a heck­u­va job.” He wasn’t.

Buck pass­ing is instant­ly rec­og­nized, such as when Texas Gov­er­nor Greg Abbott went on Fox News last week and tried to blame green ener­gy and frozen wind tur­bine blades for his state’s pow­er calami­ty. Of course, prop­er­ly weath­er­ized wind farms were oper­at­ing from Alas­ka to Min­neso­ta to Maine.

Texas gas pipelines and a nuclear pow­er plant were down, and the state’s go-it-alone elec­tri­cal grid was not posi­tioned to secure pow­er from oth­er states.

A sense of being thrown a life­line has major impact.

After the I‑5 Skag­it Riv­er Bridge col­lapsed, our sen­a­tors made late night calls to the Under­sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion and found that emer­gency aid was avail­able for just such an occur­rence. Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell, D‑Washington, drove up to Skag­it Coun­ty car­ry­ing a com­mit­ment of the first mil­lion dollars.

Anoth­er exam­ple: Dar­ring­ton is a tim­ber town usu­al­ly tough on Democ­rats. A yard behind the U.S. For­est Ser­vice ranger sta­tion became a cen­ter for direct­ing res­cue oper­a­tions fol­low­ing the 2014 Oso landslide.

A gang of locals sang prais­es of U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, D‑Washington, for quick­ly get­ting hands on resources they need­ed. The for­mer tech exec­u­tive doesn’t deliv­er snarky quotes, but deliv­ered help.

Let’s look at a few notable cas­es of mis­han­dled and han­dled respons­es, both here and else­where in the Unit­ed States, over the past few decades.

Chicago, 1979

A fierce 1979 Chica­go bliz­zard froze the Demo­c­ra­t­ic polit­i­cal machine built by the late May­or Richard J. Daley.

When told res­i­dents of his Bridge­port neigh­bor­hood were wait­ing for bus­es that did not come, May­or Michael Bilandic said they should walk. Bus­es rolled through minor­i­ty neigh­bor­hoods with­out stop­ping, bound for the suburbs.

“I was a vic­tim of the snow, not of my oper­a­tions or any­thing per­son­al,” Bilandic said after los­ing a Feb­ru­ary pri­ma­ry to insur­gent Jane Byrne.

Seattle, 2008

The Decem­ber 2008 Arc­tic blast, which par­a­lyzed the city, put May­or Greg Nick­els on a down­hill tra­jec­to­ry. He did not sur­vive the Top Two elec­tion eight months lat­er. Nick­els made the mis­take of giv­ing him­self a “B” grade in mid-cri­sis. The Seat­tle Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion direc­tor decamped to Port­land for Christ­mas in the mid­dle of the mess.

The Atlantic seaboard, 2012

The tidal surges inflict­ed by Hur­ri­cane Hugo on New Jer­sey and New York in Octo­ber, 2012, saw a coor­di­nat­ed bipar­ti­san response from Christie and Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. They were on the scene togeth­er almost instant­ly, chan­nel­ing aid to the worst hit coastal com­mu­ni­ties. Oba­ma would win a sec­ond term weeks lat­er, and Christie a land­slide reelec­tion in 2013.

Christie got his come­up­pance however.

The gov­er­nor shut down Gar­den State beach­es in 2017, muscling leg­is­la­tors dur­ing a state gov­ern­ment shut­down. He was then pho­tographed from the air with his wife Mary Pat enjoy­ing a Sun­day after­noon at Island Beach State Park.

“I have lit­tle sym­pa­thy for Ted Cruz because he made fun of my beach pho­tos,” Christie said last week.

Puerto Rico, 2017

Atti­tude is every­thing. In 2017, Don­ald Trump tossed rolls of paper tow­els to a crowd at a church in Puer­to Rico after the island was dev­as­tat­ed by Hur­ri­cane Maria. The episode became a sym­bol of Trump’s inabil­i­ty to sym­pa­thize with the strick­en, giv­en his mon­u­men­tal self-absorption.

Trump would scoff at a water purifi­ca­tion kit which helped save lives and gave him­self an A+ grade on hur­ri­cane response.

First Lady Mela­nia Trump would wear spike heels set­ting off on a trip to inspect the rav­ages of Hur­ri­cane Hen­ry in Houston.

When dis­as­ter strikes, there is what cler­gy like to call a “min­istry of presence.”

It helped a strick­en val­ley when Pres­i­dent Oba­ma stopped, in route to a sum­mit in Asia, to vis­it with Oso land­slide recov­ery workers.

And for Pres­i­dent Clin­ton to come call­ing when Cougar, Wash­ing­ton was inun­dat­ed. When the Dar­ring­ton High School base­ball team played its first post-Oso game, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and wife Tru­di were in the stands.

It’s fun­ny, too, how polit­i­cal oppo­nents show up for pho­to ops. Ultra­con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lin­da Smith, R‑3rd Dis­trict, hov­ered near Clin­ton when he vis­it­ed the South­west Wash­ing­ton flood site. State Sen­a­tor Bar­bara Bai­ley, R‑Oak Har­bor, showed up when Inslee inspect­ed a Whid­bey Island landslide.

Nat­ur­al calami­ties show us that we need government.

In Texas, we have re-learned that crimp­ing on prepa­ra­tion is enor­mous­ly cost­ly down the road, par­tic­u­lar­ly to low­er income res­i­dents and peo­ple of color.

The les­son had bet­ter take hold, since cli­mate dam­age is mak­ing extreme con­di­tions – more pow­er­ful hur­ri­canes, extend­ed wild­fire fire sea­sons, and polar vor­tex events – the “new normal.”

Way back in 1965, I knelt in a Belling­ham High School hall­way as West­ern Wash­ing­ton was shak­en by a fair-sized earth­quake. Unlike Texas after its 2011 deep freeze, we took notice. The tremor prompt­ed wide­spread retro­fit of school build­ings. By the time of the 2001 Nisqually Earth­quake, we had safer school build­ings and a rapid response plan in place. Lives were doubt­less saved.

Will the coun­try wake up to the need for infra­struc­ture mod­ern­iza­tion fol­low­ing the hor­rors in Texas, or will we see right-wing politi­cians escape respon­si­bil­i­ty and go on demo­niz­ing clean renew­able ener­gy? After all, we have just wit­nessed the worst dis­as­ter to hit Texas since Greg Abbott was elect­ed Governor.