Bush survived the controversy over the War on Terror that he practically authored. He just might be surviving the US financial crisis that imploded during his administration. These huge debacles that tried the most unpopular president of the US might be water under the bridge for Bush when he moves back to walking his horses on his Texas ranch, after he vacates the White House. But it was Hurricane Katrina that truly did Bush in.

Two former Bush advisers offered the insight for the oral history of the Bush administration as featured in Vanity Fair Magazine. They say that Katrina was the final political nail in the coffin for Bush. Katrina was proof of how the Bush government mismanaged disaster control, while the hurricane pounded the Gulf Coast three years ago. Bush did not initially realize the political impact on him of how his government poorly handled a natural disaster. According to the former aides, Bush was no longer able to connect credibly with the American public after Katrina.

The financial damage of Katrina is upwards of $25B. The hurricane destroyed 5,000,000 acres of forest. It wrecked countless public infrastructure. A 520-page congressional report entitled “A Failure of Initiative” discloses that ‘authorities failed to move quickly to protect people, in spite of the warnings days before the catastrophic storm struck.’ The report adds that the Bush administration ‘took an indifferent stance toward disaster preparations after the 2001 terror attacks, leaving the Gulf Coast vulnerable to Hurricane Katrina and contributing to the death and suffering the storm inflicted.’ The report concludes that it was government ‘passivity’ that did most damage in Katrina. In turn, it was also what did Bush in.

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Via Yahoo! News