Ex-Bush aide: O-Care is like Katrina

A top aide to former President George W. Bush compared the rollout of the Affordable Care Act to Hurricane Katrina, saying the political fallout from the botched implementation threatened to derail President Obama’s second term.

{mosads}”There are moments in a presidency where everything is different afterward, and I believe this is that moment,” former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace told MSNBC on Friday. “For us, it was Hurricane Katrina because while public support had been dropping for the War in Iraq, after Katrina, after many members of the public and every member of the Democratic Party viewed us as incompetent, and it transcended to everything else we did.

“You know, you can’t look in a crystal ball, but I believe this is a moment after which everything will be different for the president,” she continued. “And if you look at the problems he’s facing in the world, with Iran and other issues, he’s going to miss his credibility very much.”

Wallace added that the president would be unable to regain his credibility among “large numbers of the population.”

Political observers have increasingly drawn comparisons to the deadly storm, noting that Obama’s approval rating — 39 percent according to a recent Quinnipiac poll — mirrored Bush’s at the same point in his second term. Bush’s approval was hurt by the government’s botched response to the hurricane’s devastation in New Orleans.

On Thursday, Obama apologized for what he described as the “fumbled” rollout of his signature legislative achievement.

Obama said it was “legitimate” for the American people “to expect me to have to win back some credibility on this.”

“And that’s on me,” Obama said. “I mean, we fumbled the rollout on this health care law.”