Rove: Bush administration 'fulfilled' its Katrina responsibilities David Edwards and John Byrne

Published: Monday March 2, 2009





Print This Email This Don't be surprised if this causes you to spill your coffee. When pundits began to critique the recent speech of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal in an ABC News green room on Sunday, former Bush adviser Karl Rove declared that the federal government met its responsibilities with regard to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.



The following exchange appears on the video below at 2:11.



"With all due respect, the government official who was responsible for managing Katrina under the Stafford Act was the governor of Louisiana and she lost office in large measure due to the poor quality of her performance," Rove quipped.



"I think many thought that Katrina was the bookend to Iraq," The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel said. "That's when millions of Americans, left or right, woke up to the incompetence of an administration that had worked hard to diminish government as a force for good and therefore was able to pinpoint--"



"With all due respect, the federal government's responsibilities were met under Katrina which were to provide the immediate assistance, to pluck people off of the roofs," Rove remarked. "The people in charge with calling the evacuations are the state and local officials."



"The voters have made their judgment," pollster Stan Greenberg interjected.



But Rove continued to defend Bush. "Ignoring what the law requires, ignoring what the reality of the situation is, policymakers set the laws in certain way and policy describers ignore what the law did and ascribed the problems of the law to the federal government," he said.



Rove made the comments during an webcast on ABCNews.com.



This video is from ABCNews.com, broadcast Mar. 1, 2009.









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