Where's the Lisa Beamer of New Orleans?
The Bush White House, if nothing else, is a marketing machine, a triumph of style over substance. In the summer of 2002, Bush Chief of Staff Andy Card admitted as much, declaring the time for selling the planned war with Iraq was not yet ripe, "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
Therein lies the problem for President Bush in the marketing of his administration’s abysmal response to hurricane Katrina. Bush has no product. Even worse, he has no pitch man, or worse still, pitch woman. In a nutshell, George W. Bush needs the Lisa Beamer of New Orleans.
As you’ll recall, Lisa Beamer became the face of American loss, sacrifice, courage and determination in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Her hagiography started with the legend of her husband Todd, a software account manager who was among the heroes who retook flight 93 and crashed it in the fields of Pennsylvania, instead of the terrorists’ target of Washington, DC. Lisa Beamer relayed his words of action to his fellow passengers, "let’s roll."
In the ensuing months, Lisa Beamer emerged as the incarnation of American goodness and heroism in the Bush War on Terror. The well-to-do, blond, attractive and articulate Beamer became the Bush administration’s symbol and spokeswoman for the fight against Al Qaeda. Better still from the perspective of the American archetype of purity and innocence, Beamer was Christian - and pregnant. In short order, President Bush appropriated Beamer for his own purposes, introducing her in the Congressional gallery during his September 20, 2001 address to the nation. By November 8, 2001, he was using the "Let’s Roll" battle cry as his own.
In the intervening months, the Bush-fed aura of Lisa Beamer has persisted undiminished. This included the establishment of the Todd M. Beamer Foundation. In January 2002, she gave birth to her daughter Morgan, itself a media event with fawning coverage of America’s Widow Mother. Lisa Beamer has become a cottage industry, with her own 9/11 memoir, Let’s Roll.
Unfortunately for President Bush, the destruction of New Orleans has not produced the Lisa Beamer all-American heroine he so badly needs. And how could it? The median family income in New Orleans is only two-thirds of the national average, with African-Americans estimated at 80% of those living below the poverty line. (New Orleans’ 9th ward, which was completely devastated by the levee failure, is overwhelmingly black.) In the wake of hurricane Katrina, there were no doubt countless acts of bravery and selflessness, stoicism and sacrifice in New Orleans. Just not, apparently, by blond-haired, blue-eyed Sunday school teachers.
Without a stereotypical conservative hero (or heroine), President Bush and his conservative amen corner are doing what they do best: create villains. DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA head Michael Brown blame state and local government. Former RNC chair and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour called looters "subhuman." Pundits like Bill O’Reilly and even the President’s mother blame the poor themselves for their own poverty, their real barrier to evacuating the city. And the conservative blogosphere simply called for the looters to be shot.
For sure, President Bush faces a marketing challenge after Katrina. Unlike 9/11, in New Orleans, the color of suffering – and heroism – is black. And while his father at least tried to speak fondly of "the little brown ones", President Bush can’t even muster that.
|
