Of course, the storms that passed to the south of us last week didn’t only affect Kentucky, but that seems to have been the worst-hit state, so it stands in for the whole mess (just as Katrina hit Mississippi, too, but you didn’t hear nearly so much about that because unlike Louisiana, Mississippi had a competent [GOP] state government that managed the disaster effectively); and that mess, it seems to me, is important for understanding what we can expect from the Obama administration in times of crisis—and this is definitely a crisis, with over a million people suffering, and a number of deaths.  For those not used to dealing with ice storms, J. G. Thayer explains:

The problem with ice storms is magnitude. They cover vast areas, and the damage is systemic. They can wreak havoc on electric grids. Utilities can find themselves having to deal with thousands of broken lines and hundreds of broken poles. . . .It’s been about a week since Kentuckians got pounded, and they’re still digging out. Half a million people were still without power as of Saturday night, and almost half that many have no water. Emergency shelters are still open, and the governor has mobilized every single member of the National Guard to assist.

Now, by way of comparison, here’s Barack Obama in May 2007:

In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed.

Actually, the death toll was 12, so then-Sen. Obama overstated the magnitude of the tornado’s damage somewhat, but that’s still a tragedy; he certainly didn’t apologize for using it as an opportunity to bash the Bush administration for sending the Kansas National Guard to Iraq:

Turns out that the National Guard in Kansas only had 40 percent of its equipment and they are having to slow down the recovery process in Kansas.

Now, here’s this from the Obama White House website:

President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.President Obama swiftly responded to Hurricane Katrina. Citing the Bush Administration’s “unconscionable ineptitude” in responding to Hurricane Katrina, then-Senator Obama introduced legislation requiring disaster planners to take into account the specific needs of low-income hurricane victims.

OK, so the point appears to be clear:  the Bush administration didn’t care about disaster victims and didn’t do enough to respond to their needs.  Can we do better?  Yes We Can!  Which offers a not-so-implicit promise:  We will.In Kentucky, we have the first test of that promise, and so far, Barack Obama is failing.  Miserably.  Under the Bush administration, FEMA was savaged for its poor response to Hurricane Katrina; so, did they respond quickly and effectively to help those suffering from this storm system?  No.  Why?  Because it might be dangerous and difficult.  According to FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak, “We have plenty of folks ready to go, but there are some limitations with roads closed and icy conditions.”  I’m sorry, but that’s just pathetic.  For crying out loud, it’s a natural disaster—of course there will be limitations.  You find a way to overcome them, or you aren’t doing your job.  That’s the standard to which FEMA was rightly held in 2005, and it’s the standard to which they need to be held now.Also, the White House website trumpets the fact that in 2005, Sen. Obama visited the area hit by Katrina several times; has he bothered to go to Kentucky?  No, though he did find time to throw a Super Bowl party (with strips of $250 a pound Wagyu steak).  He did get around to declaring a federal disaster area—two days after the storm went through, and only after he’d been asked to do so by Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.  Compare that to the way the Bush administration and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal handled Hurricane Gustav, essentially pre-positioning the federal response.  For all that the current administration brags that they “have learned the lessons of Katrina,” they clearly haven’t learned them as well as the Bush administration did.  Their rhetoric, as always, is fabulous; their follow-through, however—as is the emerging pattern—doesn’t measure up.And then, of course, there’s the press.  Have they been on top of Barack Obama on this the way they were on top of George W. Bush?  Well, as the Anchoress writes,

Americans are freezing and dying but I guess I’ve missed Anderson Cooper flying to the midwest and crying and Geraldo shouting, “where is the help?” I guess I’ve missed members of the press demonizing President Obama for eating steak and having cocktails with the press while people are freezing and without food.When a million people in flyover country are suffering, and 42 people have died, we don’t hear much about it. If this was New York, Washington, Boston, (or if the president had an R after his name) you’d see non-stop reports, and the press would be roundly criticizing FEMA’s absence, and the White House’s disregard. Right?

Right.  Or as John Hinderaker put it,

Is Barack Obama an insensitive lout who serves $100 per pound steaks to his elite guests and turns up the heat in the White House high enough to grow orchids while a million of his countrymen are without power and dozens are freezing to death? If not, why not?Solely because that is not the story the media want to tell. Many on the web—but no one in the mainstream media—have commented on the fact that Obama has not even pretended to do anything about the massive ice storm that has disabled much of Kentucky and neighboring states. It took days for FEMA to swing into action. Why is that not a scandal? Days went by before Kentucky’s governor called out the National Guard. Why did no one blame Obama for failing to call out the Guard sooner? Probably because he lacks the constitutional power to do so; but the Constitution hasn’t changed since 2005. . . .A basic reality of our time is that our mass media are monolithic, and what they choose to report (or not report) depends on what fits the narrative they are pushing on the public. If our reporters and editors wanted to portray Obama as clueless and out of touch with ordinary Americans, he has given them ample opportunity to do so. But because they are Democrats and he is a Democrat, they have no desire to tell that story. So “let them eat steak” is not a theme you’ll be seeing on the evening news.

J. G. Thayer sums it up well:

If George W. Bush’s handling of Katrina was really such an executive catastrophe, then President Obama’s indifference to the suffering of Kentuckians is unforgivable. But since no one is objecting this time around, what does that say about the motives behind the outrage over Katrina?

Memo to Kentucky from the MSM:  we don’t actually care about your suffering, we care about its political value.  Since it has no political value, never mind.The fact of the matter is, this won’t be President Obama’s Katrina moment (whether or not it should be), because the MSM won’t let it be, and it’s just not big enough or horrifying enough for those not directly affected by it.  But if he and his administration aren’t shaken up by their poor response to this storm and its aftermath, and if they don’t learn the necessary lessons from it, they will have one.  Something will come along from which their media lapdogs can’t save them, and whether they believe it possible now or not, the Obama administration will be broken just as the Bush administration was.  Right now, they’re sowing the wind; if they don’t make some major changes, the time will come when they reap the whirlwind.

Even Jon Stewart has noticed:
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As John Hinderaker sums it up, “I think a great many liberals are hanging on to the idea that they can trust Obama because he is a liar and doesn’t mean what he says. Time will tell whether that interpretation is correct or not. In the meantime, it doesn’t speak very well of either Obama or his supporters on the Left.”

Juan Williams has an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, “Judge Obama on Performance Alone,” calling on the media to start treating President Obama fairly instead of favorably.  Williams writes,

It is neither overweening emotion nor partisanship to see King’s moral universe bending toward justice in the act of the first non-white man taking the oath of the presidency. But now that this moment has arrived, there is a question: How shall we judge our new leader?If his presidency is to represent the full power of the idea that black Americans are just like everyone else—fully human and fully capable of intellect, courage and patriotism—then Barack Obama has to be subject to the same rough and tumble of political criticism experienced by his predecessors. To treat the first black president as if he is a fragile flower is certain to hobble him. It is also to waste a tremendous opportunity for improving race relations by doing away with stereotypes and seeing the potential in all Americans.Yet there is fear, especially among black people, that criticism of him or any of his failures might be twisted into evidence that people of color cannot effectively lead. That amounts to wasting time and energy reacting to hateful stereotypes. It also leads to treating all criticism of Mr. Obama, whether legitimate, wrong-headed or even mean-spirited, as racist.This is patronizing. Worse, it carries an implicit presumption of inferiority. Every American president must be held to the highest standard. No president of any color should be given a free pass for screw-ups, lies or failure to keep a promise. . . .To allow criticism of Mr. Obama only behind closed doors does no honor to the dreams and prayers of generations past: that race be put aside, and all people be judged honestly, openly, and on the basis of their performance.President Obama deserves no less.

Williams is right, and his point is a critically important one—even more important, perhaps, than he contends.  The sort of “affectionate if not fawning treatment from the American media” that Senator Obama received during the campaign was helpful to him as a candidate, because as a candidate he was insulated from the broader reality of the American situation.  He didn’t have to put anything on the line to deal with the challenges this country faces, nor did he have to accept responsibility for anything that went wrong, because he wasn’t in the arena where those challenges are actually faced—that fight belonged to President Bush, leaving Senator Obama free to critique from the stands without having to deal with it himself.  He had a different campaign to fight, one in which perception is what matters most, and the adulation of the media could affect that in meaningful ways to his benefit.Now, however, the situation is very different; it is now President Obama’s task to be “the man in the arena,” and he is no longer free merely to comment, criticize, and suggest—he must act, and his actions will have direct and significant consequences.  As Jennifer Rubin writes,

The economy will either improve or it won’t. President Obama will either control and focus the multiple voices in his administration and prevent too many cooks from spoiling the soup (or deadlocking the administration) or he won’t. And he will either continue George W. Bush’s record of post-9-11 U.S. safety and post-surge progress, or he won’t. Those events can only be spun so much. But unemployment rates, Dow Jones averages, al Qaeda terrorists and even Congress don’t much care whether he is the embodiment of the mainstream media’s hopes and dreams.In the end, what matters most is what the President does—and what results he achieves.

This is truth, and it means that from here on out, the media aren’t really going to be able to do Barack Obama any favors; they can do a lot to destroy a president, as they did with George W. Bush, by skewing their reporting toward bad news and spinning things in negative ways, but they can’t create good news that isn’t there, and they can’t keep bad news from getting out.  No matter how hard they try, “the MSM has to get around to reporting what everyone else knows to be the case sooner or later (as they did on Iraq).”  They can only delay that point—they cannot keep it from arriving.That being the case, the one real effect they could have by continuing to fawn over Barack Obama is to foster and feed a feeling of overconfidence in the White House—which couldn’t possibly be good for the president or his administration, and could quite possibly be fatal.  Far better for them to start asking the tough questions and digging out the hidden stories now, when there’s much less on the line.  I don’t expect them to attack President Obama the way they attacked President Bush—indeed, I’m glad they won’t; what they did to our 43rd president was dishonorable and repulsive, and I would not care to see it repeated to anyone—but they need to get back to being what they claim to be, “a proud, adversarial press speaking truth about a powerful politician and offering impartial accounts of his actions.”  As Juan Williams says, President Obama deserves no less.