Don’t judge Trump on how he handles Harvey

WASHINGTON — It’s an article of faith in American politics that big disasters are defining moments for presidents—creating a huge stage for political theater and also posing some of the biggest risks. A New York Times headline this week informs us that “Harvey Gives Trump a Chance to Reclaim Power to Unify.” Across social media, Melania Trump was ridiculed for walking to the flight down to Texas in a pair of stiletto heels. (By the time she got to Texas, she was sensibly clad in sneakers.) A social-media photo meme contrasts the way Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama physically embraced the victims of disaster, while the germophobic Donald Trump spent his time with officials and pumping up what looked like a quickly assembled campaign rally (“What a crowd, what a turnout!”).

Again and again, we are reminded of the self-inflicted wound Bush delivered to himself by flying high above Katrina-flattened New Orleans, symbolically distancing himself from the death and devastation, and telling Michael Brown, his underqualified Federal Emergency Management Agency head, “Heckuva job, Brownie.” By contrast, the steely, on-the-ground response of New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to the attacks of September 11 earned him plaudits from even his severest critics and elevated him to the status of a major presidential contender.

So this may be a good time to raise a heretical notion: Disasters are a terrible time to judge a president.

Consider what Trump—or any chief executive—ought to be doing in the first days of a calamity like Harvey. He might decide that it would serve no purpose to fly to the scene, given the enormous disruption a presidential visit would cause at a moment when resources are sorely needed elsewhere. In that case, the judgment might well be “insensitive,” “aloof,” “uncaring”—a moment when clever politics are precisely the opposite of good governance. And if the president did show up, mingling with the exhausted citizenry and first responders in a shelter, he might be hammered as a “grandstander,” just another politician looking to jump into the limelight instead of getting out of the way.

And suppose the president was indeed photographed—as Trump so glaringly was not—embracing homeless families, offering a hug and comforting words. While that might win approving notices that the chief executive was expressing the nation’s desire to bond with the wounded, the hard but necessary question to ask is: So what? If those same families found themselves ensnared in an inefficient bureaucracy weeks and months later, those comforting gestures would be cold comfort. (To offer an analogy, I have zero interest in whether a physician has a good bedside manner; my interest is in knowing how quickly she can get me out of bed and upright again.)

People cheer outside of the Annaville Fire House after US President Donald Trump attended a briefing on Hurricane Harvey in Corpus Christi, Texas on August 29, 2017 | Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Now consider how the blame for a disaster—and the response to it—can be parceled out. Back in 2005, a furious battle was waged between those eager to blame Bush and his less-than-experienced FEMA director for the slow response, and those eager to blame the (Democratic) governor of Louisiana and mayor of New Orleans. The president’s reputation still hasn’t quite recovered—even though no less a partisan Democrat than Donna Brazile praised Bush for the “intense, personal, dedicated efforts he made to revive and restore people’s futures.”

In the coming months, if relief supplies are slow in getting to the thousands now stranded in shelters, finger-pointing among the different levels of government is almost a certainty. But who or what is the real culprit behind Houston’s agony? That seems to be something far harder to single out or hold to account; instead, look to decades (literally) of short-sighted urban planning—or lack of it. Last year, a deep investigation by ProPublica and the Texas Tribune found that Houston’s flood risks have been made far worse by years of unplanned growth and building regulations that took no account of how much danger the water posed.

If Harvey was a disaster waiting to happen, and if that disaster is compounded by badly designed reservoir walls and the loss of water-absorbing earth to asphalt, does the president, or the governor, or FEMA bear any responsibility for the magnitude of what is happening?

OK, but surely we can measure the response of public officials once disaster strikes, right? Well, maybe. But look at the conditions on the ground. Airports were closed for days, and weather conditions made flying impossible. Most of the major roads in and around Houston were turned into rivers, which meant that truckloads of supplies could not reach those in need. (In fact, Houston’s roads were actually designed to do this in extreme flooding—meaning that even this hazard was a feature, not a bug.) A metropolitan area of 6 1/2 million people was effectively paralyzed, and no amount of preparation, however skillful, could remotely deal with the devastation that will take years to repair.

It is, I realize, virtually un-American to suggest such a concept, but sometimes terrible things happen that no one can stop. Yes, the ability of authorities to alleviate the suffering, and heal the damage quickly, is a fair measure to apply. But the pictures of countless people who have lost everything, who are searching for loved ones, cannot by themselves be used as an indictment of those in power. They are powerful images, and seem to imply a corollary: Surely a competent government could mitigate the plight of victims smoothly and quickly. And that simply may not be true.

As for the president’s appearance in Texas: Yes, it bore the marks of a self-obsessed, egocentric boy-king who is sufficiently distanced from the rhetorical demands of his office that he was unable to offer words of compassion instead of his usual rah-rah sales pitch. (Once again, it took a teleprompter, this time in Missouri, to provide him the proper pieties.) But any semi-conscious citizen has seen this kind of behavior on display throughout the entire Trump campaign and presidency. To recoil in shock from the latest, far-from-the-worst display should be filed under the strain-at-a-gnat-swallow-a-camel category.

It is certainly understandable that aggrieved citizens will judge officials harshly when disaster strikes. Back in 1969, New York Mayor John Lindsay was pounded for the city’s late response to a snowstorm that struck the borough of Queens with special force. (He was forced to cut an ad during his reelection campaign in which he confessed that: “I guessed wrong on the weather before the city’s biggest snowfall.”) A decade later, two blizzards paralyzed Chicago, and the sluggish response of the city caused Mayor Michael Bilandic to lose a primary battle with Jane Byrne, who went on to become the city’s first female mayor.

But removing snow is a long way away from responding to a metropolis that has effectively been drowned—in this case, by the greatest deluge ever recorded in North America. There will be plenty of legitimate ways to measure how those in charge deal with the massive work to be done. But measuring a president based on feel-good images and soothing words or the wardrobe of a spouse? Not so much.

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.