WASHINGTON – Another presidential election blighted by hurricanes.
On the political front, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are hopeful that the recovery from Hurricane Helen will be similar to the federal government’s response to Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The fairly smooth process was a credit to the last Democratic-controlled White House. election season.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is trying to turn the latest natural disaster to hit the United States in an election year into a Harris-Biden version of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew. It was a belated and sloppy response that sealed the defeated president’s political fate. George H.W. Bush.
“No one has ever dealt with a hurricane or storm worse than what we’re experiencing right now,” President Trump told supporters in Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday night.
Trump’s indictment contained lies, claiming federal disaster relief funds were donated to immigrants, and Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp struggled to reach Biden, but neither He claimed that was not true. During his term as president, he carried out disaster relief efforts.
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Biden, who toured devastated areas in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina, urged people to put politics aside and help as many victims of the storm as possible.
“I hope that by doing that, we can begin to break down this intense partisanship that exists right now,” Biden said during a visit to La City, Georgia. There’s no basis for that. ”
The debate over this election’s hurricanes is particularly intense in storm-hit battleground states Georgia and North Carolina, which candidates will visit this week.
In Augusta, Georgia, Harris did not mention Trump by name but told residents, “We’re here for the long haul…The adjustments we’ve made with dedication are winning families, winning residents.” Let’s get the neighborhood back up and running.”
Disaster politics is not new.
Disaster politics has been a staple of presidential politics, from the post-World War influenza epidemics of 1918-1920 to the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
After all, the fall campaign takes place in the midst of flu season, but disasters and the government’s response to them can change the shape of American politics.
During the Mississippi River Flood of 1927, President Calvin Coolidge appointed a prominent official, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, to lead relief efforts.
Already famous for supplying food to Belgium during World War II, Hoover rode flood relief all the way to the White House (although he eventually encountered the economic disaster known as the Great Depression). , that’s another story).
President Lyndon Johnson traveled to Louisiana in 1965 to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Betsy, creating the template for the modern president. LBJ assumed personal management of collection operations.
“The President is the chief executive officer and, as the nation’s sole elected leader, is expected to take action to protect and help the American people.” Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of says political scientist Lara Brown, author of “Aspirants”. ”
“When disaster strikes, Americans look to their president to see how their promises of compassion, protection, and assistance match their actions,” she said.
1992: A warning to future presidents
The alarmist is President George Herbert Walker Bush.
Bush was already facing challenges from the economic downturn and a fierce challenge from Democrat Bill Clinton as he sought re-election in 1992.
Then, in August, Hurricane Andrew hit the south coast of Florida.
“It took too many days for the U.S. government to respond adequately,” historian Timothy Naftali wrote in his biography of President Bush.
Although the incumbent Republican president carried Florida (barely), Bush ultimately lost the race to three candidates, including independent Ross Perot.
Another cautionary tale: Katrina
His son, Republican George W. Bush, kept a close eye on things during the 2004 hurricane season, another presidential election year, when four hurricanes hit Florida in a six-week period. Ta.
The following year, after winning a second term, Bush suffered from a sloppy response to Hurricane Katrina, an example of what not to do.
President Bush said in his memoir that his missteps in the Katrina response compounded existing burdens, saying, “The aftermath of Katrina, combined with the collapse of Social Security reform and the pulse of violence in Iraq, The fall of 2017 was a detrimental period in my presidential term.” . ”
Memories of Katrina are so vivid that even Trump, no fan of the Bush family, brought it up in a recent speech in Michigan.
“A president, I won’t name her, has ruined Katrina’s reputation,” Trump said in Saginaw.
Cooperation with Hurricane Sandy
When Hurricane Sandy hit the New Jersey coast in October 2012, incumbent President Barack Obama responded better.
President Obama promoted cooperation with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a prominent Republican, as the Democratic president mounted a victory over Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
When Mr. Christie ran for president in 2016, Republicans criticized him for working with Mr. Obama. One primary opponent derided the New Jersey governor: “He was like a little kid, saying, ‘Oh, I’m with the president.'”
“Remember, he was excited about the helicopter ride,” said a rival named Donald Trump, a New York businessman at the time. “I said, ‘I would have put you in my helicopter, it would be much easier.’
Mike Duhaime, a former Christie aide, said voters in his home state of New Jersey loved Christie for working with Obama and overwhelmingly re-elected him governor in 2014.
But the Republican presidential caucus and primary voters “punished” Christie when he ran for president, Duhaime said, “as if working with the federal government in the midst of the largest natural disaster in the state’s history was somehow possible.” As if I was wrong about that.”
“At some point, compromise and bipartisanship became dirty words on the far right and far left,” he added.
political lens
As President Trump seeks to criticize Harris and Biden over Hurricane Helen, some former Trump administration officials say Trump played politics with disaster relief while in the Oval Office. said.
According to a report by Politico’s E&E News, which cited interviews with two former Trump aides, President Trump is planning to direct disaster aid to areas believed to be Democratic-leaning, such as California, where wildfires are raging. He reportedly hesitated to offer it.
Biden retweeted the article and said of the allegations: “You can’t help people in need only if they vote for you.”
“That’s the most basic part of being president, but this man knows nothing about it,” the president added.
Trump campaign spokesman Stephen Chan called the article “fake news” that never happened. “None of this is true, it’s just a fabricated story from someone’s wild imagination,” Chan told USA TODAY.
Olivia Troy, one of the former Trump administration officials quoted by E&E News, told USA TODAY that it was “very frustrating to see President Trump attack others this week over disaster relief.”
“We don’t look at disaster relief through a political lens,” Troy said.
Contributor: Joey Garrison
