WASHINGTON (AP) – Once Hurricane Charley is gone from Florida, it’s a safe bet President Bush will sweep in. Natural calamities present political opportunity, and many crucial electoral votes are in the path of Charley’s howling winds.
Bush swiftly issued a disaster declaration to expedite federal aid as Charley tore into the Florida Gulf Coast on Friday. He was acting on a request that had come from his brother Jeb, the governor, even before the ferocious storm made landfall. The president was expected to visit the area in the aftermath.
Officials are loath to ascribe campaign motives to emergency response, but politics infuses everything this close to an election. No more so than in the state that handed Bush the presidency.
“This provides both opportunities and real dangers for the president,” said Dario Moreno, a Florida International University political scientist who was safe from the storm in Miami.
Presidents are measured by the aid and sympathy that follow a big hit from nature, and Moreno said Bush stands to gain as long as he treats the emergency as more than a chance to roll up his sleeves and clear a bit of rubble for the cameras.
“If he looks like he’s doing this for a photo opportunity, it’s going to backfire on him,” he said. “He has to make sure FEMA and the emergency aid responders are working around the clock and without a hitch.”
Barring an obviously inept performance from the White House, natural disasters inoculate presidents from campaign criticism for a time because opponents are wary of second-guessing the nation’s leader in a crisis and can’t be seen as trying to capitalize on people’s misfortune.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, for example, won’t let himself be seen as begrudging Floridians federal relief dollars no matter how generous, analysts say.
“He can’t accuse the president of politicizing a tragedy,” said Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a University of Pennsylvania presidential campaign scholar. “Kerry is best to be silent on the issue – it’s territory he doesn’t need to go into.”
In 1992, Democratic candidate Bill Clinton toured Andrew’s aftermath but carefully avoided jabbing at his opponent over the halting response. And when Washington rebounded with promises of massive aid, his campaign was mum. Bush won Florida but lost the election.
Clinton’s on-the-scene empathy after the Oklahoma City bombing moved people during a low point in his presidency, and his visits to disasters including Midwestern floods became a tour de force.
“Certainly Bill Clinton set the pattern,” said Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution. “You want to be there. You want to be involved. You want to be helpful. You want to feel their pain.
“This is useful for him,” he said of Bush, “but this is also hurricane season. It would have happened for any president between now and Nov. 2.”
AP-ES-08-13-04 1825EDT
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