The Whiplash Effect

September 10, 2005

The Whiplash Effect

"Katrina has given President Bush and his party a case of political whiplash that could very well be their undoing," Craig Crawford writes. "Anyone who has suffered whiplash from a car accident knows its delayed effects and the lingering pain that, in some cases, never goes away."

The problem is that first impressions are everything in politics. "The more frantically Bush now tries to compensate for early mistakes, the more serious those initial failings seem."

He concludes: "What Katrina unleashed in our politics could well move voters in November 2006 to conclude that the presidentís party cannot be trusted to look out for average people, or at least not for those who are 'underprivileged anyway.'î

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Taegan D. Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer and Christian Science Monitor.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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September 10, 2005