George W. Bush with a bullhorn at the site of the Sept. 11 attacks. Bill Clinton at Oklahoma City just after the bombing of the federal office building. Jimmy Carter at Three Mile Island. Lyndon Johnson in Louisiana following Hurricane Betsy. Calvin Coolidge in Vermont after the floods.
Disaster is the crucible of leadership – and U.S. President Donald Trump is entering the cauldron on Tuesday, when the 45th President visits Texas amid recovery efforts growing out of the furious winds and waters unleashed by Hurricane Harvey, now downgraded to a still-devastating tropical storm
It is Mr. Trump's first opportunity to show a human side in response to tragedy; to express national sympathy rather than partisan rancour, to show emotion paired with determination. Visits like Mr. Trump's are classic presidential moments – but they are difficult passages in a presidency. In these episodes, presidents seek to get involved, to support relief efforts without distracting attention from them.
Over the decades, disasters have transformed presidencies, altered the images of chief executives, modified the role of government, even changed history. They have prompted deep introspection – experts will debate for years, for example, whether sufficient warnings were issued as Harvey gathered steam, momentum and deadly force – and often have spawned recrimination. In this case, both the Trump White House and Congress almost certainly will be forced to re-examine whether the delay in the appointment and confirmation of key officials in disaster relief and hurricane preparedness played a part in the devastation. The National Hurricane Center has not replaced its chief, who resigned in May, and Mr. Trump has not appointed someone to the top job at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, of which the hurricane centre is part.
But both literally and figuratively, presidents are often moved to wade into disastrous waters – a perilous enterprise because, much like the economy, American chief executives are given a lot of credit, or blame, in these episodes, when, in fact, they almost certainly have nothing to do with them.
Even so, these are signature moments in the life of a White House term, for Americans expect their presidents to be present – which is why the younger President Bush, whose response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was universally admired, stumbled when he was photographed merely looking out the window of Air Force One at the roiling waters of Hurricane Katrina, which battered Louisiana almost exactly a dozen years ago. It didn't help that he saluted his embattled disaster chief – "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" – when, in fact, Mike Brown's Federal Emergency Management Agency team plainly was not doing a heck of a job.
"Presidents can make an enduring image, for good or for ill, by the way they respond," said L. Sandy Maisel, a Colby College political scientist. "President George W. Bush showed both of these, positively in 9/11 and negatively at Katrina." As Mr. Trump will discover Tuesday, disaster is a substantial challenge for presidents, who want to show empathy but don't want to get in the way.
As a result, Mr. Trump, who tweeted Sunday about the "great co-ordination between agencies at all levels of government" will be avoiding Houston on his visit. The reason: to assure that, as Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on CBS This Morning, the presidential entourage will "not be getting into harm's way or interrupting the evacuations or emergency response in the Houston area."
Presidential reactions to disasters often have profound political effects. Mr. Clinton hit all the right notes in the second paragraph of his Oklahoma City remarks in April, 1995, expressing grief, thanks, hope, and, because the bombing was an act of man and not of God, vows of justice: "Today our nation joins with you in grief. We mourn with you. We share your hope against hope that some may still survive. We thank all those who have worked so heroically to save lives and to solve this crime – those here in Oklahoma and those who are all across this great land, and many who left their own lives to come here to work hand in hand with you." It was a turning point for Mr. Clinton, whose approval ratings were in the low and mid 40 per cent beforehand. Those ratings shot above the 50-per-cent mark after his comments at the scene of the bombing.
In contrast, Governor Chris Christie never recovered from his pre-election embrace of President Barack Obama, who travelled to New Jersey in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Mr. Obama offered the customary sympathy and federal largesse, but the hug that Mr. Christie, a Republican, bestowed on the Democratic President became a flashpoint for GOP activists, spawning resentment that Mr. Christie couldn't shake even four years later, when he was a presidential candidate himself.
Unpredictable in their occurrences, disasters are just as unpredictable in their consequences.
Beyond the human tragedy, measured in lives lost and property destroyed, disasters have altered the outlook of the presidents who respond to them. The Rutgers University historian David Greenberg has argued that the 1927 Mississippi River flood, which occurred while government minimalist Mr. Coolidge occupied the White House, prompted a deep re-evaluation of the role Washington should play in responding to disaster and, in fact, opened the door to an era where government became an activist force in the country and, later, in the culture and economy.
That 1927 disaster forced Washington, as Mr. Greenberg wrote, to overturn "the expectations that Washington could leave regional crises to state and local governments." But it also altered, forever, the image of Mr. Coolidge, who until then had been known as a taciturn figure, without eloquence or emotion.
A year later, Mr. Coolidge travelled to his native state of Vermont to inspect flood damage there. In that setting, he gave perhaps the most famous speech ever delivered in that state. "Vermont is a state I love," said Mr. Coolidge, until then not known for poignancy, nor vulnerability to nostalgia. "I could not look upon the peaks of Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield and Equinox without being moved in a way that no other scene could move me. It was here that I first saw the light of day; here I received my bride, here my dead lie pillowed on the loving breast of our eternal hills." That oration of the pillowed dead and the loving breast, for decades memorized by Vermont schoolchildren, is known as the "brave little state of Vermont speech."
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump visits the brave large state of Texas. Disaster is the crucible of leadership – but also a test for presidents. It's Mr. Trump's first such test, and more than Texas will be watching, and listening.
David Shribman