The first anniversary of hurricane Katrina, that catastrophe
that reshaped the physical landscape of the gulf coast
– and the political landscape of the country – is upon us. But
the August 2005 transformation that sent the Bush administration
into a tailspin from which it has not recovered started weeks
earlier, when anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan camped out in front
of the president’s ranch as he vacation
ed.
The first anniversary of hurricane Katrina, that catastrophe that reshaped the physical landscape of the gulf coast – and the political landscape of the country – is upon us. But the August 2005 transformation that sent the Bush administration into a tailspin from which it has not recovered started weeks earlier, when anti-war protestor Cindy Sheehan camped out in front of the president’s ranch as he vacationed.
Days before Katrina hit, I wrote that my mom, not Sheehan, was Bush’s biggest problem. A year later, that is truer than ever.
My mother is a Republican; if she weren’t, she knows my grandfather would rise up out of the grave and march her down to the registrar’s office. For over 40 years she has run a one-chair beauty shop in Ventura. Her 70 or so steady customers lean conservative. These aren’t lefty loonies hogging TV face time in Crawford. These are America’s moms and grandmoms.
A year ago they were fed up with President Bush, and the antipathy has only grown. Of the 70, according to my mother, there remains a single Bush holdout. They don’t talk politics when she’s around.
For the rest, the thought of another two and a half years of this administration is almost more than they can bear. Whatever lingering sense there might have been last summer that Bush was redeemable has vanished, replaced by a deep fatigue with the direction of the country. These women are bushed.
Their language is direct: Bush should, well, be gotten rid of. Cheney should just retire. Rove is a crook.
Their sentiments are born out in the polls. A year ago, according to surveyusa.com, of the 35 states Bush won in 2004, he still enjoyed plurality support in only 10. In the latest surveyusa.com report issued Wednesday, that number is down to four: Utah, Idaho, Wyoming and Oklahoma. A recent CBS poll puts support for Bush’s Iraq policies at 30 percent, down 10 points from a year ago.
Meanwhile, at Natalie’s Beauty Shoppe, they talk about Katrina, about Roe v. Wade, about religion (“Have you heard of this James Dobson guy?” my mother once asked in dismay), but the conversation always comes back to Iraq. These Vietnam-era moms are now worried about their grandchildren. And then my mother said something I hadn’t heard before:
“If they had sons, this would be different.”
My mom’s a little old fashioned, and still thinks of the armed forces as male. But it’s true that when it comes to close combat, America’s boys take the brunt of it. And between George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld there are seven children, six of them daughters. Rumsfeld’s son Nicholas, 39, is virtually invisible, at least to a Web search.
I don’t know if there is anything to that notion, but there might be. America’s moms think in such terms.
Their opposition doesn’t stop at worry over sons, or the larger issue of the lack of sacrifice by the war’s biggest supporters. These women complain about how Bush pals around with big money, or how he struts like a cowboy (that arrogance many saw as a virtue after Sept. 11). They see an oil baron in the White House, connect the dots, and – true or not – believe Bush could do something about gas prices but won’t.
So, I asked, did anyone cast a vote in 2004 she’d like to have back? Interestingly, mom said no. Most people thought a vote for Bush then was a vote for the lesser of two evils, and they still believe that.
The vote they want back was in 2000.
Al Gore is now the brightest political star in their firmament. They believe he is trying to save the world, and in so doing has grown, in their eyes, into something they all yearn for: a statesman. “Have we run out of statesmen?” mom asked.
I was struck by that. There was something charming yet fundamental in it, a sentiment of a bygone age, a plea for fewer slogans and greater wisdom. In Texas vernacular, they want more cattle and less hat.
American political sentiment is slow to change, but once it does, like a train or a large ship, the momentum is hard to divert. In Natalie’s Beauty Shoppe, the momentum that set in a year ago now seems unstoppable.
