What’s Behind Biden’s Pivot to Maui

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, August 31, 2023

 

All of a sudden, Joe Biden and his administration are laser-focused on disaster-recovery efforts in Maui.

 

On Wednesday, the president convened cabinet and relevant executive-agency officials to coordinate support for areas of Hawaii affected by this month’s devastating wildfires. Beyond disaster relief, the administration announced that it would provide $95 million via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to upgrade Hawaii’s electric grid, the poor maintenance of which produced the spark that touched off the deadliest American wildfire in a century. And the White House made sure to post all of it on social media.

 

This flurry of highly visible activity marks a departure from the administration’s initial reaction to the fires, which began on August 8. When a reporter asked Biden for a boilerplate response to the events in Hawaii nearly a week after the fires broke out, he inexplicably offered a “no comment.” The tone-deafness of his reply and the indolence of his conduct were matched only by the White House’s lethargy in responding to criticism of his callousness (“He didn’t hear the question,” Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton unconvincingly claimed in an August 25 statement). By mid-August, the administration was on the backfoot. Defending its seemingly apathetic and halting response to the disaster, administration spokespeople insisted that FEMA was on the case. After all, the president could walk and chew gum — or, more specifically, deliver a speech promoting “Bidenomics” in Milwaukee — at the same time.

 

The radical change in the tone from the Biden administration in relation to events in Hawaii corresponds with another disaster unfolding this week in Florida. Only if you believe the White House and its staff are utterly insensitive to political narratives is it possible to convince yourself that the administration is unaware of the implicit and unfavorable contrast with Ron DeSantis that their handling of Hawaii’s wildfires invites. If that is their concern, it’s a valid one. By all accounts, good fortune and exemplary preparedness have combined to spare Florida the worst that Hurricane Idalia might have wrought.

 

“The bad-news-type calls we were accustomed to during Ian, those were not happening during this storm,” DeSantis said late Wednesday as the storm passed over Florida into the Atlantic. Indeed, Idalia proved less destructive than last year’s Hurricane Ian, despite a track that took it over a part of the state that is less accustomed to hurricanes. DeSantis “said no hurricane fatalities had been confirmed from Idalia and that it appeared most residents in vulnerable, low-lying areas had heeded evacuation orders and warnings to move to higher ground,” according to Reuters. “All state bridges in storm-stricken areas had since been examined and cleared for use, and most of the 52 school districts that closed ahead of the storm planned to reopen on Thursday, officials said,” per a Reuters report from later the same day.

 

From the top of the chain of command all the way down the ranks, Florida officials have been receiving strong marks from the press for their handling of this disaster. Compare that with Hawaii, which has seen resignations over the state’s poor handling of Maui’s fires and their aftermath, and where municipalities and utility providers are at one another’s throats in the scramble to assign blame for the blaze to someone. The lackadaisical conduct of Hawaii’s Democratic leaders was mirrored by the president’s similarly languid approach, and all of it is cast in stark relief by how Florida has routinized its coordinated disaster-response efforts.

 

Yes, that is a political message that some enterprising campaign will retail. And although Democrats will feign great offense at the politicization of tragedy and hardship, it is a message with the potential to resonate.

 

“We have very different political philosophies, but we’ve worked hand-in-glove,” the president said of the Florida governor seeking to oust him from the White House. “I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help, and I trust him to be able to suggest that this is not about politics.” But the White House did not give DeSantis the same opportunity it provided him in the wake of Hurricane Ian: the chance to stand at a lectern adorned with the seal of the president of the United States and deliver a nuts-and-bolts speech on his ongoing disaster-relief efforts.

 

Even at the risk of inviting the same criticisms that dogged him over his hesitancy to engage early and eagerly with the relief efforts in Hawaii, that was probably wise. In the Democratic commentariat, there is consensus around the notion that Donald Trump is on a glidepath to the Republican presidential nomination. Even entertaining an alternative outcome in the upcoming Republican primaries is regarded as an exercise in self-delusion. If the Biden White House shares its base’s confidence, it isn’t acting like it.