The idea, derived from an ancient Chinese worldview, that natural disasters might tell us something about the effectiveness or legitimacy of the highest national leaders has popped up recently in stories about the political effects of hurricane Katrina on President Bush.  The traditional notion of "Mandate of Heaven" is more nuanced than the simple idea that natural disaster means loss of legitimacy; the Mandate is rooted in how well people are being treated and protected and served by their government.  It is in that way, as seen in the pictures of terrible suffering after Katrina, that it is reasonable to raise the question of whether the hurricane signaled a political failing on the part of President Bush.

     And now we face another storm: this one aimed right at Bush’s home state of Texas.  So, even though I was not quite willing to directly engage the Mandate of Heaven question last time, it is hard to escape this time.

    I will avoid framing the question in a way that might elicit a stark "yes" or "no" answer (this on the advice of some readers who believe that the best questions are more open-ended).  So, here is the question: what does this second hurricane suggest for President Bush’s hold on the Mandate of Heaven?

     And the answer is: Bush can maintain the Mandate, but he must appoint a strong leader to oversee hurricane relief.  He cannot manage reconstruction himself and if he tries to do so without appointing an effective subordinate administrator, he could lose the Mandate.

    This is a great reading: Hexagram 3, "Difficulty at the Beginning," with pure yang lines in the first and fifth positions, and a pure yin line in the second position, thus tending toward Hexagram 7, "The Army."

    What is great about it is the uncanny appropriateness of "Difficulty at the Beginning" (that is from the Wilhelm translation; the Lynn translation names this hexagram "Birth Throes"): it is the combination of symbols for water and thunder; it describes a storm!  And that storm depicts a time of great difficulty, like the difficulty of a thing struggling to be born.  So, the sense here is also a beginning.  This has some resonances – not linguistically but conceptually – with the idea that crisis brings opportunity: the time is bleak now, thunder and rain and chaos are all around, but as the storm passes there is a chance to create something new, something good.

    Of course, the trick is how to draw something good out of chaos.  And the oracle gives fairly precise advice to Bush for how to handle the difficulties he and the country face.  First off, he should not rush into action; quick response is the job of others (a job that was done very poorly for Katrina and will hopefully be better handled for Rita).  His job is to hold back, get a sense of the big picture and concentrate on finding an effective subordinate to oversee recovery.  There is an interesting call for both action and non-action in this response, and I think the general idea is for Bush to be calm and give off a sense of patient attention, while a new chief of hurricane recovery springs into action.  This interpretation is drawn from Lynn’s translation of the first Yang line:

One should tarry here.  It is fitting to abide in constancy.  It is fitting to establish a chief.

   And the commentary of Wang Bi (an ancient thinker) on this line:

One brings cessation to chaos by means of quietude, and one maintains quietude by means of a chief.

    Even if Bush finds the right person to whom to delegate authority and manage the government’s response, success is not guaranteed.  This is a long term issue.  In the second yin line there is an image of a chaste young woman resisting a marriage proposal because circumstances are not right, the "correct Dao does not function " (Lynn, 154).  She waits ten years until there is a "return to the constant Dao" and then accepts betrothal.  Ten years.  That’s a long time.  Hurricane recovery is long-term.

   The tendency toward Hexagram 7, "The Army," reinforces the general message of Hexagram 3.  The key here is the importance of a commander, one who knows how to raise and lead an army and also fulfills the confidence of his ruler.  There is also advice here for how the commander should relate to the people: he must attend to economic prosperity and humanity.  If he does not, the entire project could fail.

    So, Bush must appoint the right person to address the long-term problems of hurricane recovery and that person must do the right thing by attending to the material and moral needs of the people.  If all that goes right, Bush will retain the Mandate of Heaven; and, by implication, if any of this goes wrong, Bush could permanently lose the Mandate.