“As noted in Chapter 4, there’s abundant evidence that presidents use their disaster-declaration authority under the Stafford Act to aid their own reelection prospects. Presidents direct more disaster relief to politically important states and declare more disasters in election years—and the average number of yearly disaster declarations has been increasing over time.35 Bill Clinton still holds the election-year record, with 75 disaster declarations in 1996; George W. Bush came in a close second in 2004, and has declared disasters at a faster rate overall than Clinton.” PoliticsEmergenciesUs PoliticsDisastersUs PresidentsFema Book:The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power Source: The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power
“In business or in politics, responsibility without authority is any chief executive’s worst nightmare. That was the political nightmare that gripped the Bush administration in the weeks after Katrina. As the National Post’s Colby Cosh put it, ‘‘The 49 percent of Americans who have been complaining for five years about George W. Bush being a dictator are now vexed to the point of utter incoherence because for the last fortnight he has failed to do a sufficiently convincing impression of a dictator.’’93 Small wonder, then, that President Bush promptly sought the authority to head off future political disasters by overriding the decisions of state and local officials and using the military at home.” PoliticsUs PoliticsDisastersGeorge W BushUs PresidentsHurrican Katrina Book:The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power Source: The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power