Politicians dance with Mother Nature and trip or Kanye was right?

I haven’t posted in a while but Papa Suvarnakar and I were talking about how Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama are getting criticized for over preparing for Hurricane Irene.  I came across this stuff mostly because in Haiti, we have are largely isolated from the 24-hour news coverage.  The first article is from the Economist and basically says that the media coverage for Irene was as much as it was for Gustav but that the overhype basically did its job. The link is here

The other interesting link is an abstract from research relating to the correlation of natural disasters and how politicians are viewed in the aftermath.  The conclusion of the research was that if it was disaster was bad enough (Katrina-level), it didn’t matter how much federal aid a state got afterwards, people still blamed the President or Governor for ‘an act of God’.  The link is here

Conclusion: Pretty much if you are a politician, it will always be better in the long run to over-prepare and eat crow if your wrong because if the natural disaster is really bad, no amount support after the fact will help you get votes. Also that Kanye was right sort of.

Lastly, here, here and here are places you can help and no one will accuse of being a johnny-come-lately politician.  Our thoughts are with victims.

-n

Advertisement