So How Many Died At Watergate?

So How Many Died At Watergate?

Matt Yglesias puts the ObamaCare/Katrina comparison in a special perspective:

Since the comparison is in the air, it's worth noting the big difference between Hurricane Katrina and the botched Obamacare rollout. So here it is: 1,833 people died during Hurricane Katrina.

Obviously, George W. Bush and his administration are not responsible for all of those deaths. A storm's a storm. But let's be very generous to Bush and say that the underlying bad fundamentals are responsible for 95 percent of the damage and the bungled response gets just 5 percent of the blame. That's 91 dead people. How many people have died using HealthCare.gov? I'm pretty sure it's fewer than one.

That's one way of looking at it. Here is another, which starts thusly:

1. Bush's political party didn't design and enact Hurricane Katrina.

2. Bush didn't have 5 years to craft his response to the hurricane.

3. Bush didn't have the power to redesign the hurricane as he designed his response to it.

And a third view - Bush was at least instrumental in leading the rebuilding effort after Katrina; the jury is out on ObamaCare.
And for those scoring at the Yglesias home, we have managerial scandals and debacles ranked by immediate bodycount:

Katrina

Benghazi

Fast and Furious (US dead only)

Chappaquiddick

Watergate/ObamaCare/Whitewater/Iran-Contra (tie).

And do let's note - a standard lib talking point during the promotion of Obamacare was that access to health insurance saves lives. Dare we presume that failure to implement Obamacare thereby costs lives, eventually if not by this weekend? Ezra Klein was talking about 15,000 to 20,000 lives per year, which dwarfs the 1,833 who died at Katrina.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2013/11/so-how-many-died-at-watergate.html