Money, Money, Everywhere

The president arrived in darkness, in the dead silence of what looked to be--and in many ways was--an abandoned city under military occupation. Riding through town in an SUV, escorted only by two police cars with their sirens off, George W. Bush made his way through deserted streets, past the oddly intimate detritus of disaster--a random single sneaker, an empty baby stroller, a stack of looted mattresses. On the corners of the French Quarter, pairs of soldiers materialized in the headlights: members of the 82nd Airborne, wearing red berets and hefting assault rifles, snapping salutes to a commander in chief they could not see. Bourbon Street--once neon-bright, tumultuous--now stood empty in the pitch dark, covered with thick dust like a Western ghost town, the utter quiet broken only by chirping locusts and the creak of unlatched shutters in the night.

But one place was illuminated--blindingly so: Jackson Square, the heart of a city that, in turn, is the heart of a Gulf Coast region devastated by the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the United States. White House advance men, who brought their own generators as backups, lit the square with hundreds of rock-concert high-voltage lamps. They draped camouflage nets from the trees to shield the scene--the Cathedral of St. Louis and an equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson--from surrounding streets. They barred the press and public; among the few allowed inside the gates were chief of staff Andy Card, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New OrleansMayor Ray Nagin. When he got the cue last Thursday night, Bush strode across the empty lawns to give one of the most important speeches of his presidency, committing himself, and the nation, to two daunting, expensive and complex missions: not only to resurrecting the city of New Orleans and the region but to uplifting them, making them "even better and stronger than before the storm." Not a New Jerusalem, perhaps, but a Better Easy.

It won't be easy. Bright lights can be symbols of life and renewal, and so the gulf region--and the president--has to believe. The man depicted in the statue, after all, became a hero by winning a stunning victory in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. But Bush's own Battle of New Orleans has barely begun. By late last week there were signs of renewal in the city and the sounds of hammers and saws all along the coast. But Bush's new commitments, as broad and sweeping as the Mississippi River itself, could divide his own party, blast gaping holes in the federal budget and create management tasks that swamp his second-term agenda--including the creation of a benign Iraq.

The administration now must renew its financial case for the Iraq war against the backdrop of the desperate needs of the Other Gulf, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded in an interview with NEWSWEEK. In the fall, when Congress considers military spending--and perhaps a new special appropriation to fund the war--the pressure will grow. "I don't doubt that we'll have to make the argument in budget time..." Rice said. "But I have every confidence that it's an argument that Americans will understand, resonate with."

Even before Hurricane Katrina, the president's standing had been eroded by doubts about the war, by painfully high gasoline prices and by a sense that the benefits of the rather smoothly cruising economy were not reaching average voters. Then came the storm, and the flood, and his own late-arriving focus on the crisis. The result: the lowest job-approval ratings of his presidency. In Jackson Square, Bush again took responsibility for the federal government's failures in emergency relief. But he and his aides were eager to try to put that lost cause behind them and seize control of the narrative of rebirth.

The result was an audacious, sketchy--and, to some, dangerously expensive--gumbo of government ideas: Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, Ronald Reagan's tax cutting and the pork-barrel populism of Louisiana's own Huey Long. Having extracted $62 billion in emergency relief from the Republican-controlled Congress, Bush now pledged to seek whatever it takes to: rebuild the infrastructure of the gulf region hundreds of highways, bridges, police and fire stations and other public buildings; deploy tax cuts, tax breaks and cash grants to spur business investment; give stipends and vouchers to as many as 1 million victims of the disaster, helping them remake their lives, educate their kids and find jobs anywhere in the country; fortify New Orleans against Katrina-level hurricanes and floods, and lift up blacks whose poverty, he said, "has roots in a history of racial discrimination." Administration officials said that the three specific proposals Bush mentioned in his speech--a Gulf Opportunity Zone, a lottery for abandoned federal land and job-training grants--would cost less than $5 billion. But the bottom line for every idea mentioned and commitment made: unknown. "We will do what it takes," Bush said.