Bush tries to rebound from public opinion slide
WASHINGTON -- President Bush was in perhaps the deepest political trouble of his White House tenure: He had been excoriated for his response to a deadly tragedy; he was facing unified and aggressive Democrats; and he was watching gas prices reach record highs as his poll numbers sank to record lows.
In recent days, Bush has moved to control the damage: He pushed through more than $61 billion in aid, he asked for a day of prayer for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, and he scheduled a new trip to the region, his third since the storm devastated the Gulf Coast.
And yesterday, he hauled Michael Brown, the federal official who became the public face of the government's response to the tragedy, back to Washington.
Bush stopped short of sacking Brown, the Federal Emergency Management Agency director, as his critics have demanded, despite recent reports that Brown had embellished his resume.
The man Bush nicknamed ''Brownie" will keep his job and is still charged with preparing the nation to respond to catastrophes.
But removing Brown from the front lines was part of a broader effort by the White House, which is desperately seeking to stop a political slide that may be threatening to much of the president's second-term agenda.
As Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Brown's boss, made the announcement on Brown in Baton Rouge yesterday, White House officials and GOP leaders fired back at the president's critics.
At a briefing yesterday, Bush's press secretary, Scott McClellan, accused journalists of distorting Bush's remarks about the levee breaches, while Republican leaders said Democrats were playing politics in the midst of a crisis. And Laura Bush, visiting evacuated families Thursday afternoon in Southaven, Miss., said the federal response to the hurricane has been handled ''across the board, very, very well."
Laura Bush said reporters are ignoring good news and focusing on the problems: ''I think we've seen a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened. There was a huge number of people who were rescued, especially considering that a lot of people were rescued one at a time by helicopter."
Nevertheless, surveys suggest that Bush's presidency has suffered. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released yesterday indicated that only 39 percent of Americans approved of Bush's handling of his job, and 65 percent say the country is on the wrong track. Katrina and gas prices fueled that opinion.
In the days after the hurricane, Brown quickly became a focal point for critics of a stumbling federal response that even the president said was unacceptable.
As New Orleans spiraled into anarchy, Brown said in several TV interviews that he had been ''surprised" to learn that tens of thousands had been stranded in the convention center in stifling, unsanitary conditions without food and water.
Democrats have blasted Brown as an unqualified patronage hire; before joining the administration, he worked on Bush's campaign, and his last job was as a top official with the International Arabian Horse Association. Yesterday, Time magazine reported that Brown had exaggerated his credentials.
Despite the criticism, Bush stood behind Brown at first, using his nickname and singling him out for praise Sept. 2 at a briefing in Biloxi, Miss. ''Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," Bush said; others applauded.
But as the news reports of despair, death, and chaos in New Orleans continued, the performances of Brown and FEMA drew widespread fire: Democrats demanded that Bush fire Brown, world leaders questioned the president's leadership, and even some Republicans called for investigations into the federal government's preparedness and response. Yesterday, Democrats praised Brown's removal from the scene but said Bush stopped short.
''It is not enough to remove Mr. Brown from the disaster scene," Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada and the Senate minority leader, wrote in a letter to Bush. ''Mr. Brown simply doesn't have the ability or the experience to oversee a coordinated federal response of this magnitude."
Brown's boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, sidestepped questions yesterday over whether his key deputy had been forced out. As FEMA director, he said, he must be ready to respond to potential threats posed by storms and terrorists, and the mission of Katrina relief is too big a job to allow distractions.
Asked by an Associated Press reporter whether he was being made a scapegoat, Brown said: ''By the press, yes. By the president, no."
A lawyer by trade, Brown has been FEMA director since 2003, after two years as the agency's deputy director and general counsel. Time Magazine reported yesterday that Brown had contended to have been ''an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" in Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978. He was an assistant to the city manager with no oversight duties.
Though Brown is the main target, comments Bush made himself have contributed to the damage.
Upon arriving in New Orleans after the storm, he recalled having come to the city previously ''to enjoy myself -- occasionally too much." On Thursday, Bush announced that he was cutting red tape to ensure that disaster victims could receive $2,000 debit cards, even as storm victims standing in line to get the cards at the Astrodome in Houston were shown complaining about delays.
Bush drew withering criticism when he said in a TV interview that the breach of levees was a surprise, despite years of federal reports, scientific analyses, and newspaper articles predicting that it would happen in a storm of Katrina's strength.
McClellan said yesterday that Bush's comment has been ''interpreted wrongly."
Democrats continued yesterday to call for an independent panel to investigate the government's preparedness for the disaster. In addition, they called for a new agency to coordinate federal, state, and local reconstruction efforts. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, recommended a ''Gulf Coast Regional Redevelopment Authority" modeled on the New Deal-era 
