hmm. you were a college student in new orleans when katrina hit and you had to evacuate then. i was. do you can you compare the two? are they different storms? is this one worse? i don t know if i can say which one is worse, but my perspective is different now. i was able to escape new orleans although it was the last minute. and now, i m trapped inside without power, i don t know what s going on on the outside. so i don t i m uncertain. that s a little bit scary. i don t know what s going to happen till daybreak versus katrina, i was able to get out of the city. it took us maybe eight to ten hours to go from new orleans to lafayette and we were able to go home. so we were able to be of help in a different light. we feel a little bit helpless on inside here in houston right now. uh-huh. have you kids, right? i don t have kids. but i m with my friend, and he
fully address it. joining us now, karl rove, former senior advisor, deputy chief of staff, george the goo. is this rhyming with hurricane katrina? we have no way of comprehending how big it is? that s one similarity. katrina hit four states and in three of those states, mississippi was governor haley barbour, alabama was governor bob riley and florida was governor jeb bush. we had governors in charge of disaster emergency services who knew they were doing. under the federal law, the president is in charge of responding and organizing the relief and response to a natural disaster like this as the governor. when the governors didn t have their act together, mainly louisiana and the city of new orleans, things in a go so well.
parents. in dickinson, texas, we re under a mandatory evacuation. so i m not sure what is going on. we just found out and are trying to put everything together and process it as it all comes in. you talk about processing it, i read a quote from earlier today saying, i can t cry anymore. how are you feeling? today is better. when we got up at 2:00 a.m. yesterday morning, we watched the news for 14 hours. and it was literally like watching everything that i had already been through one time happen right again in front of my eyes. so it was really hard. yeah. i can t imagine. so where were you, you were in louisiana 12 years ago tomorrow when katrina hit. yep, that s correct. the same movie playing out, at least, though, you re okay. yes. that s all that is important. i can say one thing, things are
encouragement into a was that good reason? as president, sometimes, your intentions get overwhelmed by perception. my intention was to say somebody working hard, keep working hard. it turns out those words became a club for people saying, oh, this guy s out of touch. douglas, how important is a president, and an administration s performance in situations of natural disaster politically? well, it s politically crucial. i mean, you have to stay on top of it, george w. bush was in san diego when katrina hit. he stayed out there. gave an irrelevant foreign policy speech. and when he finally made a big decision, he never went into louisiana or mississippi. he did a flyover. and then when he finally landed in mississippi, he did that brownie quip. fema was awol. they were nowhere to be seen. the superdome was packed with people. there was a hole in the roof.
if you live anywhere from brownsville all the way to corpus christi, you re going to be under water. i hope everybody made the right decision because a bad decision will cost lives. it was almost 13 years ago that katrina hit the gulf coast, and we all know what it was. that one was a category. let me get you a little closer to where rthe coast is. it s hard to see. corpus christi is slightly inland. there s a bay here. but this is the eyewall of the storm. and this is what s going to push the water onto land.