I have taken the best thoughts on this editorial article to include here, but strongly encourage visitors to this blog to look to the original post in full. I found it just now in Yahoo! News. But as we all know, these are the headlines and stories that may appear briefly in American mainstream media but suddenly disappear. My bolded sections are what really strike me.
For the title, this comes from the quoted statement of "historian Robert Dallek", from this article. It crystalizes the crisis that all the Bush Administration spin cannot alter. This blog post today directly relates to my post yesterday on the political and semantic use of the term "Blame Game" as a way to draw attention away from legitimate concern and attention RIGHT NOW, not in February 2006 when the President suggests his investigation into the failures of the Katrina Relief effort commence.
In Washington, so is blame.
Blame is a main exit off the road to getting elected. So in times good or bad, officials try mightily to avoid it, or at least to shoulder it well.
In the 24/7, split-screen, blog-drenched, unfiltered America, controlling the image and controlling the language go a long way toward controlling the blame.
But so far, the only clear winner of the recent battle of images is the lethal, inanimate force of nature named Katrina.
On Thursday, President Bush stood before a bank of television cameras--American flags arrayed behind him--to announce financial aid and other assistance for victims of Hurricane Katrina. But broadcast alongside that announcement were images from New Orleans and reports that more than a dozen bodies were being removed from a hospital.
It has been that kind of communications battle for the president and the army of Cabinet officers who have been deployed. Vice President Dick Cheney made his first trip to the Gulf Coast area Thursday, sleeves rolled up, concern on his face, empathy in his voice.
But a ceremonial visit is not enough. The difficulty so far for the administration has been making the images and words match the reality that people are seeing on their screens.
"There's no question that these sorts of television images have a big impact on people and in many respects shape reactions to the White House," said historian Robert Dallek. "But at some point it's the reality that bites.
"The images that have been constantly on television--a city that is under water, people who have been displaced, sobbing, crying, the evacuation of people--you can have this kind of spin-doctoring and have people say all sorts of things, but I think these realities on the ground [matter]."
SNIP
"This is a basic crisis communications principle: When you are dealing in a crisis situation, people want to look, see and feel that some type of leadership is being projected," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic communications consultant.
"There is a void, and people are looking for someone to fill that void," he added. "In the modern media age when most people get their information through television images, it is important to physically show leadership."
But there is only so much that even good staging and soaring words can overcome.
SNIP
At the same time, the public relations war is one the president cannot afford to lose.
"It's crucial," said Keith Appell, a Republican communications consultant whose firm often does battle for conservative clients in the culture wars. "Under President Clinton, I thought his FEMA director, James Lee Witt, was very effective, and it benefited President Clinton.
SNIP
Last Friday, when the president first visited with disaster victims in Mississippi, he hugged and kissed victims alongside scenes of relief trucks arriving.
The president, who let several days pass before visiting the devastated Gulf Coast, initially failed to provide a similarly strong image of effective leadership. As yet, he has not even given a nationally televised prime-time address to Americans about his plan for dealing with the disaster. To be sure, he has said that the initial response was "unacceptable" and vowed forceful action.
However, the problem has been that for every positive image, there have been dozens more that have been negative. Even the words of the president's mother, Barbara Bush, added to the problem when she seemed to suggest that those evacuated to the Astrodome might be better off than if they had continued to live their impoverished lives in New Orleans.
That has led to a rush to assign blame among both Democrats and Republicans. While the president was quick to say earlier in the week that he did not want to engage in a blame game, others in his party have done so frontally.
In a release Thursday, the House Republican Conference blamed local and state officials in Louisiana, many of whom are Democrats. The release included a photo showing hundreds of school buses under water and said city officials could have used those buses to evacuate citizens. The release also blamed the mayor of New Orleans for the decision to use the Superdome as a shelter.
SNIP
For Bush, the difficulty is that the images from the Superdome, the New Orleans convention center, and now, constantly, from the water-clogged streets are beamed the world over. And the president, by stepping out last week and vowing to clean up the mess, in essence took responsibility for the relief effort, if not failures in preparedness.
"The argument that goes on now is about `Let's not play the blame game, because we need to get on with the business of caring for people,'" Dallek said. "But the rejoinder to that, at least by thinking people, is that if you had people who failed at their jobs, you need to look now. Do you want them to stay in place and continue doing a lousy job?"
Winning the battle of images is only part of the struggle. The administration also has tried to shape the language around the recovery, notably when the president, and then nearly every Cabinet officer, said that "saving lives" was the first priority. Bush also offered up his administration as "problem solvers" who ultimately would get results.
So far, the president's critics say, the administration has found neither the words nor the images to inspire confidence.
"Even as we speak, they really haven't determined what the tones and right chords are," said Lehane, who worked for Vice President Al Gore. "On the communications level, these story lines get written very quickly. . . . At the end of the day, you just come back to the fact that this is a national disaster and the national government is responsible for handling it."
Resource.full
