Guest Putz #2: Ann Althouse

Ann is our favorite of the Guest Putzen. Check out this beauty from 9/4/2005:

Hurricane Katrina has diverted our attention from Iraq, and now the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist and the Roberts confirmation hearings will further absorb us. Certainly, those who are committed to the anti-war movement are frustrated to have built up attention to their cause only to see it torn away. Some of them have tried very hard to link Katrina to the Iraq war.

Ann, trust us -- it wasn't that hard.

I'm sure such efforts appeal to those who are already against the war, but I tend to think most Americans would find them obtuse or offensive.

Err, no. What they found "obstuse" and "offensive" was the federal response to Katrina.

The theme has been the woeful, overarching incompetence of the Bush administration. If the administration proceeds to do well with the hurricane disaster, it might make people more likely to assume it must be doing well enough in Iraq too.

"Proceeds to do well"? With what, the spin? Ann's writing this a week after New Orleans drowned, four days after "no one could've anticipated the breech of the levees," and two days after "heckuva job." By Sept. 4, anyone with half a brain could tell the feds had pretty much screwed the pooch, Ann.

The anti-war activists will feel tempted to point to all the failings of the hurricane effort to keep the general incompetence theme alive. But I think ordinary people feel very bad about the things that went wrong in the Katrina aftermath and will eagerly consume any new flow of good news. They will get tired of those who harp on the bad, especially when it is conspicuously part of a larger political agenda.

Ann, is it true that crow tastes like chicken?