Hurricane Katrina certainly hurt Bush's agenda and
reputation. It revealed an incompetent bureaucracy managed
by indifferent people, unable to respond to crisis, causing
unnecessary suffering and a few deaths.
As I thought about this, I remembered the heat wave that
struck France a couple years ago. As I recall it, hundreds
if not thousands of people died from the heat wave. The
French bureaucracy sat on its hands and did essentially
nothing to organize shelters and medical response.
That negligent response to the heat wave in France killed
many more people than the negligent response to Hurricane
Katrina. At least that's how I recall it. Of course the heat
wave didn't cause much property damage, but more importantly
it did rack up a death toll.
Was there a backlash against the French government for its
handling of the killer heat wave? Did the French President's
ratings fall into the dustbin? Was public reaction to the
deaths in France muted by the absence of property damage?
Were there attempts at reform of the French bureaucracy?
Just curious if the European list members recall the
reaction to the French heat wave. With Bush, the negligent
response to the hurricane was probably "the last straw" in a
series of confidence-eroding decisions. However both are
classic examples of government failure, and I wonder why
comparisons to the French Heat Wave were never brought up.
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