In 1973, I lived in Charlotte Harbor, Fla., for about three months. We had a beautiful 1920s house on the Peace River with wood-slat-shaded porches on three sides and white wicker furniture everywhere. Surviving on almost no money, the little we earned was from occasionally performing manual labor at a warehouse. Florida is a state built from development booms and busts, with the evidence of these repeating cycles in abundance all over the state, though this was a lull period. A newspaper reporter friend and I would spend evenings by the river as he drank and loudly recited Vachel Lindsay poetry (“The Congo”).Sometimes we’d drive over the bridge to Punta Gorda for dinner. The restaurant served all-you-could-eat college-cafeteria-style food. The Early Bird Special attracted quite a mob of retirees, most of whom parked their Cadillacs right out front.
Although still largely underdeveloped, and seeming a couple of decades behind the times, there was still a feeling that Florida was already a state under siege. Cruising around, especially along the coast, was revealing. Evidence of developer and homebuyer greed, and concurrent disinterest in the state’s ecological integrity, was everywhere. Huge houses on the water with docks were the most desirable, so development after development sprawled along spiderwebs of man-made canals built to serve the mandatory power boat(s). Very few communities had much in the way of developmental or environmental regulations. Those that did were the richest communities, whose residents wanted to limit development, restrict beach access, and control crowding. Captiva and Sanibel Islands in particular, I remember, were stringently restricted, with dense natural fauna along the road shielding the elaborate beach mansions from view.
It was beyond obvious that if a hurricane hit Florida’s west coast, the devastation would be in the tens of millions, as so much of the building was ecologically unsound. The web of canals was as unnatural and misshapen as a porn star’s body.
The desire for big boats and bigger houses was coupled with a general stinginess; there was need for a sizable service population, but wages were low, with a significant illegal immigrant population working in the construction, housekeeping, and restaurant trades.
The situation in the rest of the state was no better, especially South Florida. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had long operated on the principles of taking no prisoners, ignoring nature, and the-bigger-the-better, regardless of whether a project was actually needed and/or effective. Rivers were straightened and swamps drained. Lake Okeechobee was being strangled by vegetation, while the Everglades were under existence-threatening assault. Few believed the vast Everglades were vulnerable, so any warnings were flippantly dismissed.
The labor situation was worse. The vast sugar plantations treated workers as though the feudal system of medieval times represented an overly enlightened indulgence.
All of these concerns were regular topics among working-class Sunshine State natives facing the obvious evidence of environmental, social, and political irresponsibility all around them. They were far from hardcore environmentalists; most of them deeply mistrusted that term. When it came to the labor situation, their religious beliefs and sense of common decency motivated outrage. Forget socialist leanings or Marxist ideology; they regarded pro-labor legislation and union organizing as more Yankee proselytizing.
The three decades since then have seen exponentially expanding development, especially along the coast. Ever more canals have been built, in disregard of the state’s water table, ecological systems, and potential weather. The many gated communities and boat-dock-boasting mansions were matched with trailer-park shantytowns housing the workers servicing them. The problems facing Lake Okeechobee became unavoidable, as did the threat to the vast Everglades. Finally political lip service is being paid to addressing these problems, though with the Everglades, at least, Governor Jeb has matched his brother President George at divorcing his rhetoric, promises, and even legislation from action.
Hurricane Charley, the first serious Gulf Coast storm in almost a half century, was predicted to hit around Tampa but actually swept ashore at Port Charlotte, about 100 miles to the south. Little had been done in the way of preparation or evacuation. Damage has been estimated at $20 billion, reflecting the development and population growth since that “tens of millions” of three decades back. In the wake of the hurricane, from which it is expected the area will need many, many months to recover, there has been little discussion about the serious overdevelopment and lack of building restrictions. Expect much of the rebuilding to simply replace what was there, without new planning guidelines or development restrictions.
In Florida, common-sense warnings by the natives were ignored. In Austin, it has become routine to dismiss our own environmental community as overreacting, overrestrictive tree-huggers. Admittedly, there are those extremists who do reject compromise and sound apocalyptic warnings over almost any building. But they are a minority. As we scar the Hill Country with overbuilding, ignore the limitations of the water table, and regard the most reasonable environmental restrictions as attacks on private property, we should look toward the Peace River.
Perhaps to some, chancing the once-in-a-half-century devastation of life and property is an equation that makes sense – the tragic but acceptable costs of progress. From my personal perspective, the hurricane simply accentuates almost a century of bad choices and lack of consideration. The greater, deeper problem is not as much another hurricane as what happens when overdevelopment finally tips the scales toward the ecologically unsustainable.
In the Hill Country a long-enough drought would accentuate the lack of long-range planning and disregard for reasonable environmental projections in most development. But rather than the outstanding crises, I fear the cumulative, ongoing, almost mundane impact. Development operates on a timetable that projects well into the future, so by the time the extent of the damage becomes obvious, when the water base, the vegetation, and air quality are unable to sustain the population, we will have built well beyond it.
One of the most depressing aspects of the profoundly disgusting assault on Kerry’s war record is his and the Democratic Party’s lack of preparation for it, and their subsequent stuttering response. Without arguing that the specifics of this campaign were knowable, it is not unreasonable to suggest that in light of Karl Rove’s track record, they should have expected the outrageously unexpected. As part of Rove’s brilliance is to leave no fingerprints, Republican loyalists will indignantly demand proof of his involvement in this as well as previous dirty-trick campaigns. Ignoring their barely disguised smirks (which inherently verifies this complaint), it is easy to claim that even if he is not directly involved, a Rove-directed campaign inspires such tactics.
The Kerry campaign reasonably assumed that the candidates’ respective war records were not likely to be invoked by the Republicans. A decorated wounded combat veteran who later came out against the war, compared to a pro-war hawk who – in the best-case scenario – used his father’s influence to get out of serving in combat. Given the possibility Bush shirked even that light National Guard duty, the most daredevil political operative would stay far away. Especially as that untested, privileged, little-traveled chicken hawk involved this country in a deadly, unnecessary, badly planned war, the end game for which is not even distantly apparent.
But this is exactly where Rove (or the Rove-vicinity apparition) soars. Attack where unexpected, cast doubt even if it is obviously baseless, turn weaknesses into strengths. If the worst charges against Kerry are accepted, he still went and served, whereas President Bush didn’t. Instead, now we hear confident assaults on Kerry’s record, integrity, leadership, and resolve that are divorced from reality. Previous contradictory statements by Swift Boat veterans, conflicting accounts, and official records are ignored in the raging fire of innuendo. The thousand exploding layers of the nonissue are a tactic Rove has perfected. Ignoring the ever more obvious draw-the-line dots between the Bush campaign and the anti-Kerry veterans, the president disingenuously denounces negative campaigning. If there were a way I could find this president more ethically despicable and politically immoral than I already do, this would have been it. Sadly it was just Bush as usual.
The worse part is that as much as some insist that presidential campaigns are so serious that they should focus on the issues rather than electorally strategic flotsam and jetsam, I’m not sure I agree. Any discussion of the issues, the offering of big ideas and innovative proposals, has become carefully prepared theatrical dialogue. In a way, responding under fire – showing some skill at improvisation and an ability to dramatically redirect the campaign agenda – is far more indicative of performance in office than prepared ideological rhetoric. Rove and the gang are well aware that the most unreasonable, dishonest, unexpected, and meaningless attacks are the most difficult to answer; the terrain is so distortedly abstract that reasonable footing simply doesn’t exist. Calling someone a silly goose, for example, usually leads to the unintentionally confirming response “I’m not a silly goose.”
Kerry has floundered and wavered in the midst of this smear campaign. Bush, meanwhile, is calm and collected, presidential and distanced. Modern campaigning is such that images and emotional resonance are more important than record, content, or ideas. Bush appears above it all because he is above it all. He simply doesn’t care about the consequences of his actions. Bush is as unconcerned with the international diplomatic impact and devastating human cost of the Iraq war as he is with the long-term social consequences of dismantling the social safety net or the tax-cut expanding-budget shifting of costs onto the next several generations of Americans. He was born to privilege, to attend Yale, certainly not to actually serve in combat and to be president. Such monarchical assumptions are by nature unconcerned with performance, cost, or reality. In his whole life, what he has done with what he has been given has never been of any concern to Bush, or served as a criterion by which he has been judged or rewarded. Bush can afford to be removed and presidential, after all: He is of the ruling class born to be president. Besides, there is always Rove and the gang, ready to do whatever needs to be done. Not for the good of the country and its people, or even to achieve an ideological vision, but to be sure that Bush Jr. is protected as he gets to do what he wants, how he wants.
This article appears in August 27 • 2004.