Harvey And Katrina

Once the breathless coverage of the disaster plays out, there will be the inevitable questions about what could have been done differently.

These discussions will mostly suck.

Yes, global warming made this storm bigger.  No, global warming did not make this storm.

In the end, the biggest lesson will go unlearned: sprawl is bad.  Houston built outwards and paved most everything.  Pavement means the ground can't absorb water.  Building outwards means that for millions there was simply no "other" place to go.  Notoriously lax zoning laws make it impossible to evacuate a city like Houston.

New Orleans drowned in Katrina, because it was in a bowl.  New York drowned in Sandy, because it's basically at sea level.  Houston drowned because it's basically a flat plain covered in buildings and pavement.  Hurricanes will keep doing this.  If you live in Denver, you're safe.  If you live within 50 miles of the coast, you aren't.

Inevitably, this question will turn to Trump.  Comparisons will be made to Katrina, because people don't understand how history works.  Trump's tweets during Harvey were, of course, abominable and tone deaf.  While he may have been paying attention during the landfall, he will constantly be distracted by trivialities and lose focus.

Those comparisons to Katrina will be all wrong, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out the other day.  Katrina wasn't even Bush's Katrina.  The narrative is that Bush's ham-fisted response destroyed his presidency.  Here's the actual story:

Historically, you can see 9/11 pretty clearly.  You can also see the upsurge around the invasion of Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein.  Can you spot Katrina in there?  A massive collapse in his approval numbers?  No, you can't.  In 2005, you can see an erosion from his second inauguration until the end of the year.  That included Terri Schiavo, the attack on Social Security and, yes, Katrina.  But his numbers REALLY took a dip in early 2006, several months after Katrina.

Lots of people are amazed that Trump can even manage a 35% approval rating, given his colossal incompetence, venality and base cruelty.  But as this graph shows, public opinion moves more slowly that the pundits and news junkies assume it will.

There is apparently a good team in place at FEMA, because he has some reasonably competent people on his national security team and no one wants another bungling response to a catastrophe.  But in the end, Harvey's devastation will be felt in Houston and in Texas, not in Washington DC.