Honest Politicians?

It's a shame that it's seen as a surprise, rather than something to be expected:

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to right the wrongs he said bogged down efforts to rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Seven months into the job, he's earning high praise from some unlikely places.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, R-La., says Obama's team has brought a more practical and flexible approach. Many local officials offer similar reviews. Even Doug O'Dell, former President George W. Bush's recovery coordinator, says the Obama administration's "new vision" appears to be turning things around.

Not too long ago, Jindal said in a telephone interview, Louisiana governors didn't have "very many positive things" to say about the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

But Jindal said he had a lot of respect for the current FEMA chief, Craig Fugate, and his team. "There is a sense of momentum and a desire to get things done," the governor said.

Added O'Dell: "I think the results are self-evident."

Kudos to Jindal and O'Dell for giving credit where credit is due. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, please take note.

Prepare to be Chastened

You remember Bruce Anderson from his ethnically sensitive column on Hurricane Katrina (Don't blame Bush - Blame black people!), or perhaps from his "carbon emissions, schmarbon emissions" column about global warming (Yes, The real leader on climate change is Mr Bush ). Watch out, Bush critics - he's coming for you.

It is not difficult to make the case against George Bush.

Ouch.

There have been mistakes.

Mistakes, plural? My how the world has changed following Bush's final press conference... Bush sort of admits to three mistakes,

Clearly putting a "Mission Accomplished" on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.

* * *

I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake. I should have argued for immigration reform.

Back to Anderson:

But in their abuse of him, many of his liberal critics demonstrate their own weak hold on reality.

You mean, like crazily being concerned about carbon emissions, or not blaming the Katrina disaster on African Americans? Or what? (Sorry, Bruce - I'm not even sure G.W. is on your side on those points.)

In trying to belittle him, they merely reveal their own littleness.

Yes, yes. Tiny little liberals. We get it.

George Bush is a much more considerable figure than the caricature version.

Er, Bruce, that's not a defense... you're damning him with faint praise.

As he has set great events in motion, it will be impossible to judge his Presidency for many years.

Another presentation of the "You can't judge Bush by his decisions, but must wait a few decades or generations to see what comes next. If you parked a feces flinging monkey in front of a fan, Anderson would likely assure us that "You have to wait to see if a verdant tomorrow grows out of the monkey's newly fertilized surroundings." Had Bush initiated a nuclear war, Anderson would probably be telling us that we have to wait and see if the benefits of reduced world population and possible beneficial mutations of the human genome lead future generations to regard him as a great man. Or, as Anderson so aptly puts it,

It is not impossible that history will offer a partial vindication.

Partial vindication is not impossible? Does praise get any fainter than that?

Okay, that was Anderson's first paragraph and there's a lot more... of similar quality. Read it and weep, you tiny little liberals. Anderson continues to make sweeping, unsubstantiated statements (e.g., "Although some of George Bush junior's speeches will rank high in the annals of political oratory, once he was without a text, he often went adrift." - er, which speeches?), and presents a second-hand depiction of Bush's astonishing leadership behind closed doors that's worthy of a SNL skit. For eight years we've been told that Bush is brilliant, witty, smart and commanding, until a camera lens hits him at which time his brain seems to turn to mush. Maybe there's some hidden camera footage? An audio recording? Because as much as I want to give Bush the benefit of the doubt, you would think by now we wouldn't have to take people like Anderson's apocryphal friend at their (purported) word.

Typical of Bush's defenders, Anderson wants to reinvent the Iraq war.

After 11 September, the US Administration asked itself one repeated and agonised question. Why do these people hate us? The Bush team came up with their answer: because they live in failed states, which offer their young no hope in this world and thus leave them open to the temptations of fanaticism and a better deal in another world.

Well, not quite. What Bush actually said was,

They hate what we see right here in this chamber - a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms - our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.

That's not quite the same thing, is it.... Anderson apparently didn't convince even himself, as he carries on about Hussein's desire for WMD's and suggests that choosing not to invade Iraq and topple Hussein would have been tantamount to waiting "until the certainty of a mushroom cloud".

It seemed that all the routes to progress in the Middle East and safety in the West led to Iraq.

Talk about your hyperbole.... But "seemed"? His defense of the entire Iraq debacle is "Appearances were deceiving"?

But in moving forward with the war, "There was one problem." Just one, mind you. Wanna guess? I'll give you three tries.

Largely because of the malign influence of that fraud and tautology, international law, we have grown squeamish about regime change.

I bet that was at the top of your list. I mean, think of all the leaders who weren't toppled due to American squeamishness about regime change and fear of international law. Manuel Noriega, Bernard Coard, Slobodan Milosevic, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras... all happily ruling their countries. Squeamishness like that almost assuredly was why the U.S. would never have backed a coup attempt in Venezuela before not invading Iraq.

As a result, the overwhelming desirability of regime change in Iraq had to be downplayed, and there was a further difficulty: the most unfortunate un-meeting of minds in recent public policy. After 2001, in both Washington and London, there was a split between those who knew Iraq, who were generally hostile to the War, and those who wanted war but usually knew nothing about Iraq.

Oh, this is too good. Here's Bush, downplaying regime change in a joint press conference with Blair, April 6, 2002:

THE PRESIDENT: Maybe I should be a little less direct and be a little more nuanced, and say we support regime change.

Q That's a change though, isn't it, a change in policy?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it's really not. Regime change was the policy of my predecessor, as well.

Q And your father?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I can't remember that far back. (Laughter.) It's certainly the policy of my administration. I think regime change sounds a lot more civil, doesn't it? The world would be better off without him. Let me put it that way, though. And so will the future.

Talk about nuance. But what about Anderson's concern about the split of opinion on the Iraq invasion between, shall we say, those who knew what they were talking about and those who didn't?

George Bush had little confidence in his Secretary of State, Colin Powell. Unable to sack Mr Powell, he made up for it by not listening to the State Department. Tony Blair never took much notice of his foreign secretaries.

As a result, the Arabists' expertise was disregarded and ... the direction of events was left to the neo-conservatives, most of whom were dangerous idealists who believed that democracy was an infallible political antibiotic.

But enough about Fred Hiatt. No, in fairness to Hiatt, he at least recognized Bush's "commitment" to democratization for what it was. If the people Bush in fact allowed to lead him around by their nose were even half as informed as Hiatt, Anderson's account would fall apart. What's amazing to me is that Anderson's trying to defend Bush by arguing that Bush had a choice between going with knowledgeable experts and Colin Powell, and people who knew absolutely nothing about anything - and that Bush made the wrong choice. Anderson elaborates that, if Iraq hadn't been such an unmitigated disaster in the hands of the incompetents picked by Bush, "George Bush's ratings would be much higher". Well, yeah, but in that universe we might be talking about how Bush's record of good decision-making justifies calling him a good President, rather than how once the dust settles and future Presidents and people put Humpty Dumpty back together, it's "not impossible that history will offer a partial vindication".

The funny thing is, having just said that, Anderson tells us:

There was one unfortunate side effect of the war on terror: Guantanamo.

I guess Anderson sees the rest of the side-effects, including two years of chaos and lost opportunity in Iraq, the idiotic disbanding of the Iraqi military, loss of world respect, loss of respect as the world's preeminent military power, as fortunate side effects?

At the time, it seemed a good idea: a cunning means of preventing American lawyers from undermining America's security. But the US prides itself on being a nation founded upon laws. It follows that a legal vacuum is only tolerable for a brief period.

So it seemed like a good idea to ignore U.S. law and values, create a legal black hole where you could drop prisoners, many of whom were picked up by mistake, deny them due process, charges, access to lawyers, trial, smear anybody who tried to assert that we would be better off respecting our historic values and providing an example for the world of fairness and justice (the type of American values somebody like Anderson sees as "undermining America's security"), and engaging in treatment of some prisoners so atrocious that, despite their crimes, we may have virtually no evidence that we can use against them in court in anything resembling a fair trial. By now even Anderson's ready to bring the Guantanamo prisoners back into the light, but he adds,

That said, anyone who denies that there are some exceedingly dangerous men in Guantanamo should be forced to live among them.

No, in fact, it's the people who flouted American law, and people like Anderson who cheered them on, who should be forced to live among those we are unable to convict due to the Bush Administration's use of torture and contempt for the law.

Funny how only a couple of years ago Anderson saw Bush's Katrina failure as relevant to his legacy, but now... nary a mention. But there's a consistency with his prior piece - then, as now, every failure that occurs on Bush's watch is the fault of something that came before his Presidency:

The decisions which doomed New Orleans were taken years before he became President, including the one to build the city in the first place.

Yes, I'm sure that there were many times in the wee hours of the morning when Bush woke up screaming, "Darn you, French Mississippi Company! Darn you, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville! How could you do this to Brownie and me!" How could Bush possibly have foreseen a disaster that was a mere 287 years in the making. In fact, it's unfair to expect that Bush would have foreseen any disaster. Really:

On the economy, and like Gordon Brown, George Bush could be accused of failing to fix the roof while the sun was shining. But two years' ago, it all seemed to be working. ... George Bush did not foresee the crisis. Who did?

A lot of people saw disaster coming, actually. Sure, they were largely marginalized by the media, save most notably for Paul Krugman who hollered loud, clear warnings from the editorial page of the New York Times. If all of that flew below Bush's radar, it can fairly be said that as with Iraq, a large part of the fault lies with his natural tendency to surround himself with incompetents who tell him what he wants to hear, while marginalizing and ignoring anybody who knows anything about anything.

So there you go, Bush critics. Don't you feel small?

Another Lost $Billion in Reconstruction Funds....

But this time it's not in Iraq.

The Bush Administration doesn't do many things well, but when it comes to graft, fund-raising, and outright incompetence, they stand head and shoulders above most prior U.S. governments.

Sorry, Chief - I Just Don't Buy It

I understand why the town of Gretna and its police chief are trying to redeem themselves in the eyes of the world - what a black eye. The chief of police protested on NPR's All Things Considered,

"I'm very pissed off ... I am, because I've been painted as a racist and this community's good reputation has been blemished because of something that we did because the city of New Orleans was ill-prepared to handle the situation that they had and expected us to evacuate their city without any preparation, without any notice, without any contact ...

"We were not contacted by anybody in the city of New Orleans, police or city officials, prior to, during, or since the storm. No one called us and said, can you handle these people? Can you help?"

I will concede that it would not be an easy task to suddently have to deal with thousands of refugees fleeing a flooded city. I just wasn't aware either that a town had the right to shoot over the heads of civilians in order to prevent lawful entry, nor that the victims of a hurricane and flood deserved refuge only if city officials gave advance warning of their plight. And I just can't buy the chief's logistical arguments that, after one day in which the town shuttled 5,000 evacuees from the bridge to a FEMA site:

"I realized we couldn't continue, manpower-wise, fuel-wise," Lawson said Thursday. Armed Gretna police, helped by local sheriff's deputies and bridge police, turned hundreds of men, women and children back to New Orleans.

Let me get this straight - he was able to amass a force of his own officers, sheriff's deputies and bridge police, maintain a 24 hour watch to prevent any evacuees from crossing the bridge, justify shooting firearms over the heads of civilians, while making no provision to provide for the safety and welfare of those his actions trapped... because it would take too much manpower to keep the buses running? Because, although there was apparently plenty of fuel to carry officers to the bridge, there wasn't enough gas in town to power the buses? Admittedly, there's something more which colors my skepticism:

After someone set the local mall on fire Aug. 31, Gretna Police Chief Arthur S. Lawson Jr. proposed the blockade.

* * *

Sometime on Wednesday, Aug. 31, a fire broke out in the mall, next to the local branch of the sheriff's office, and police chased suspected looters out of the building.

Mayor Harris had had enough. He called the state police.

"I said: 'There will be bloodshed on the west bank if this continues,'" Harris recalled. " 'This is not Gretna. I am not going to give up our community!' "

This, of course, is blamed on evacuees although I have not seen any evidence to support that contention. I could speculate that the Gretna mayor and police assumed that they were evacuees, because they were darker in complection than the majority of town residents; but would that help the chief's case that closing the bridge wasn't a racially motivated decision? And if it is that easy to call the state police for backup to close the bridge, why should we presume it would have been harder for them to request additional drivers and fuel for buses (assuming a shortage actually arose)? I liked this statement as well,

An African-American officer fired at least once in the air to calm the group, Lawson said, but that was when they were still loading evacuees on buses the day after the storm. Lawson said he planned to investigate other allegations, such as excessive force.

Shooting over people's heads to calm them? And why bring up the officer's race?

The NPR piece concluded with a valid question,

"Chief Lawson would like to know without communication, food, water, enough buses and gasoline, how long would it take another American city to reach the limits of its compassion?"

I dunno.... A week?

Private Markets, FEMA and HUD?

With the catastrophe in New Orleans, the Bush Administration has proposed a program which will help poor (former) residents of New Orleans become homeowners on what is presently federal land. But in the short-term, thousands will be herded into temporary housing - trailer parks constructed under the auspices of FEMA, meant (in a paraphrase of an official who was describing the planned parks) to be comfortable enough to live in but not comfortable enough such that people will want to stay.

NPR, a few days ago, aired a program (sorry, I'm not sure which one) which described life in a similar trailer park in Florida. Some of the residents spoke of the difficulty in finding alternative housing. One didn't want to move to a new apartment that wouldn't take her dog. Another couple, despite having employment and having lived rent-free for a year, claimed that they had been unable to raise money for a security deposit and first month's rent. The description of the park made it seem like it fit the description above - not a place anybody would truly want to stay over the long term. But hundreds of people had lived in the park for a full year, with no apparent intention of going anywhere.

This raises some "free market" questions. Since the Bush Administration occasionally pretends that there are free market solutions to just about any problem, and that the market can resolve most issues better than government, why are they so distrustful of the free market when it comes to housing? There are millions of rental units available in the United States, and it may well turn out to be cheaper to negotiate rental contracts with their owners than to build (and ultimately throw away) thousands upon thousands of new "rent free" housing units in temporary trailer parks. And even if it's not, Bush is writing a blank check for post-Katrina clean-up, so why not give private landlords a boost?

Beyond that, there's our nation's public and subsidized housing. If the free markets are the best solution, and home ownership helps lift people out of poverty, why aren't home ownership programs being implemented through HUD? Instead we have what amounts to more permanent versions of the FEMA trailer parks - housing units that, even if well-built, is often permitted to deteriorate to the point where the are comfortable enough to live in but not somewhere you would want to stay over the longer term. (And yet, as with the "temporary" Florida trailer park, people stay for the longer term anyway.)

So how about shifting HUD's focus from rental units to condo units? Give anybody with a job, no matter how mediocre, a subsidy toward the purchase of a condo unit as opposed to a rent subsidy. Convert many public housing projects into condos, put condo boards in charge of them, and have them contract with private companies for maintenance services. Rather than subsidizing section 8 rental housing, subsidize section 8 condo housing. Let the working poor become homeowners. Create a community with a stake in their property, rather than one which falls victim to slumlords and to neighbors who see no downside to trashing the place.

Granted, such a program probably wouldn't work for all people, and there would probably be some catastrophic failures along the way. (I am reminded of an effort in England, some decades ago, to move people out of crumbling houses into newly (but poorly) constructed row houses, with the net effect being the realization that by the time they finished the initial transition the first set of "replacement" houses would, themselves, have to be replaced.) But the status quo is not particularly impressive, so isn't it worth taking a look at a possible market solution? (Or are we only interested in "market solutions" which follow the model of "trickle down economics".)

... And Then There's Mayor Nagin

If you want to learn how the Mayor of New Orleans fell down on the job, Lies.com provides some detail. I've been wondering about the very real logistical problem described by Nagin's defenders - if he had successfully evacuated the city before the hurricane, where would he have taken the people? But unlike Nagin's defenders, I don't see that as a defense of inaction, but instead am incredulous that no New Orleans administration developed that part of an evacuation plan.

The Federal Response To Hurricane Katrina

I am not sure how I came across this editorial by Jack Kelly, a columnist whose work I don't previously recall reading. I am not sure whether he is being intentionally misleading, or if he simply doesn't grasp the issues. Kelly complains,

It is settled wisdom among journalists that the federal response to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was unconscionably slow.

* * *

But the conventional wisdom is the opposite of the truth.

Jason van Steenwyk is a Florida Army National Guardsman who has been mobilized six times for hurricane relief. He notes that:

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

So the National Guard met its "standard timeline" once deployed? Does that mean that no criticism can be made that the "standard timeline" is inadequate, or that deployment should have occurred at an earlier time? Does that mean that no criticism can be made of other failures - after all, it was not only the National Guard which had a duty to respond to the crisis, and it seems to be beyond quesiton that DHS and FEMA fell down on the job.

Journalists who are long on opinions and short on knowledge have no idea what is involved in moving hundreds of tons of relief supplies into an area the size of England in which power lines are down, telecommunications are out, no gasoline is available, bridges are damaged, roads and airports are covered with debris, and apparently have little interest in finding out.

So they libel as a "national disgrace" the most monumental and successful disaster relief operation in world history.

Fortunately for them, Jack Kelly is here to... well, fail to explain the logistics, or why deployment could not have been more efficient. It is even possible to question all of that without disputing that the Guard did a good job once deployed. But apparently Kelly is here to score rhetorical points, not points of fact. And as if I needed more evidence of that:

Journalists complain that it took a whole week to [accomplish a significant rescue effort]. A former Air Force logistics officer had some words of advice for us in the Fourth Estate on his blog, Moltenthought:

"We do not yet have teleporter or replicator technology like you saw on 'Star Trek' in college between hookah hits and waiting to pick up your worthless communications degree while the grown-ups actually engaged in the recovery effort were studying engineering.

What is more telling? That Kelly sought out Moltenthought's blog as a source, or that he thought that particular stupid insult was so clever and insightful as to merit repetition in a newspaper column?

Kelly concludes,

Exhibit A on the bill of indictment of federal sluggishness is that it took four days before most people were evacuated from the Louisiana Superdome.

The levee broke Tuesday morning. Buses had to be rounded up and driven from Houston to New Orleans across debris-strewn roads. The first ones arrived Wednesday evening. That seems pretty fast to me.

A better question -- which few journalists ask -- is why weren't the roughly 2,000 municipal and school buses in New Orleans utilized to take people out of the city before Katrina struck?

I'm not going to defend the local response in any number of respects. For example, the declaration of the Superdome as a point for people to seek refuge was made without any advance provision for food, water, or sanitation. But last I heard, there were not great lines of people trying to escape the city before the Levees broke - and afterward it was too late. According to Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, the buses were in use up to that point. It may be that the bus effort was too little or too late, but Kelly again doesn't appear interested in the facts.

Here's something that bothers me. Before 9/11, the "big three" emergency scenarios for federal disaster officials were reportedly a terrorist attack on New York City, a major earthquake in Los Angeles, and a hurricane that flooded New Orleans. Spread the blame as you will, but if this is the Best that Bush's Deparment of Homeland Security can do for one of the "big three" some four years after 9/11, there is no conceivable defense of its incompetence. Whether or not state and local officials were doing their jobs, once Bush declared Louisiana a disaster state the federal response should have been kicked into high gear. Just as federal ineptitude doesn't absolve the state and local authorities of their share of responsibility for their own failures, the state and local mistakes and failures do not excuse a botched federal response.

But then, as I have noted before, government officials can be expected to take responsibility for mistakes only when they are certain that they will not be held accountable.

Krauthammer Plays The "Blame Game"

Today, Charles Krauthammer tells us who we should blame for the post-hurricane fiasco in New Orleans. I can't argue too much with his essential points, as I've posted similar sentiments here - Blame Bush all you want, but state and local authorities bear responsibility, and the federal disaster management "professionals" who displayed astonishing incompetence bear responsibility and Bush, though bearing responsibility for the appointment of those incompetents (both at DHS and FEMA) and for not kicking them in their butts after their initial fumbles, can appropriately delegate responsibility for this type of disaster. But he loses me with his last two points - blaming Congress for making DHS too bureaucratic? Blaming the American people for not supporting good energy policy?

That last point in fact seems inconsistent with his earlier claims.

This kind of stupidity merits no attention whatsoever, but I'll give it a paragraph. There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period. The problem with the evacuation of New Orleans is not that National Guardsmen in Iraq could not get to New Orleans but that National Guardsmen in Louisiana did not get to New Orleans. As for the Bush tax cuts, administration budget requests for New Orleans flood control during the five Bush years exceed those of the five preceding Clinton years. The notion that the allegedly missing revenue would have been spent wisely by Congress, targeted precisely to the levees of New Orleans, and that the reconstruction would have been completed in time, is a threefold fallacy. The argument ends when you realize that, as The Post noted, "the levees that failed were already completed projects."

(That's a great initial straight line, but I'll resist the temptation.)

It would be more correct to assert that the consensus view of scientists and climatologists is that there is insufficient evidence to suggest that recent Atlantic hurricanes represent anything but part of a climatic cycle. There is a scientific consensus that global warming has not changed Atlantic wind patterns so as to affect Hurricane formation or strength. There are, however, scientists who look at sea surface temperatures, known to contribute to hurricane strength, and suggest that those temperatures are increasing as a result of global warming with a resulting increase in the severity of hurricanes. Time will tell - either the recent pattern will subside and the Krauthammer group will say "I told you so", or the pattern will continue to a point where it becomes statistically impossible to attribute the hurricanes to normal weather cycles, and other hypotheses will take the fore.

It is also reasonable to assume that the proposed projects which might have prevented this type of disaster, even if given the full backing of the Bush Administration, would have been far from completion and probably would not have made any difference.

But how do I reconcile the claim, "There is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes" with the blame, "The American people ... have made it impossible for any politician to make any responsible energy policy over the past 30 years"? Once you remove climate change from the equation, what does energy policy have to do with the disaster in New Orleans? (Also, did I overlook Krauthammer's columns where he took on the Bush Administration's energy policy, and its permitting energy interests to effectively write its energy bills? Perhaps he's describing himself as a microcosm of the "American people"?)

And what of his introduction?

In less enlightened times there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews).

A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy. The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush.

As much fun as Krauthammer has pretending otherwise, the heirs to the "less enlightened times" he describes are not political progressives. They are "religious leaders" like Pat Robertson, who pray for the death of Supreme Court Justices, and blame gays, wiccans, and Planned Parenthood for disasters (natural and man-made). I know Krauthammer is an ideologue, but is he too closely aligned politically with the "religious right" to even notice what its more extreme elements are actually saying about this disaster (or 9/11)?

Rumor vs. Reality

Taking a look at some sensational rumors and dubious reports of criminal activity after the hurricane, Reason asks, "Did the rumor mill help kill Katrina victims?" (See also this story from the perspective of a stranded hotel guest, which I learned of through freelance researcher Maggie Brazeau.)

For the Record

In a microcosm of a weird debate over "taking charge, over at the Volokh Conspiracy a couple of conspirators can't seem to agree as to whether Rudy Giuliani should have been sent down to New Orleans to supervise disaster relief, or if President Bush should take command. I am not into hero worship - even assuming Giuliani wanted the job, I don't think that sort of appointment would do anything to help. What does Giuliani represent to the people of New Orleans? What does he know of them? The context is very different from New York City, and the skill set demanded is also very different. (If the goal, though, is to overshadow news stories about government ineptitude, such an appointment might work for a couple of days.)

I am also not one to think that Bush should be taking charge. Had Bush done his job, he would in fact have quality people at FEMA and DHS who were responding capably and efficiently to the crisis. But even given Bush's lousy choices for appointments, he is the President of the United States - even on this scale, disaster management is a job he should be delegating.

Presidential involvement in this type of disaster has often revolved around carefully orchestrated visits and photo opportunities - something I have personally found distasteful starting many Presidents ago when I first realized the purpose of the appearances. Oh, perhaps I'm being too cynical - a President's appearance can help rally and inspire the people who have been ravaged by a disaster, as well as those who are engaged in the relief effort. But it is my impression that appearances at disasters have turned into events to help advance a President's public image, followed by generous allotments of federal aid to help secure votes in the next election. (Isn't that the stuff Bush is supposed to be good at? Look at his performance after the 2004 hurricanes in Florida, and the record amounts of federal aid provided (sometimes indiscriminately). So the problem here was... what? Not enough Repubicans left treading water?)

In any event, a lot of responsibility for disaster management should fall on state and local government. The federal government has assumed the role of assisting with large-scale disaster relief - in many cases taking the lead role - and with that assumption of power should come the responsibility of competent performance. But disasters should be managed by professionals in disaster management.

The Weakened Standard

David Ignatius quotes William Kristol:

"Almost every Republican I have spoken with is disappointed" by the administration's response to Katrina, Kristol told The Post's Jim VandeHei. "He is a strong president . . . but he has never really focused on the importance of good execution. I think that is true in many parts of his presidency."

If I may be completely unfair in my translation of that remark:

He is a strong president...

This seems to mean, "I agree with Bush's agenda."

but he has never really focused on the importance of good execution.

This seems to mean, "But he's completely incompetent." A CEO President who can't execute? The head of the Executive Branch of government who can't execute? You can't be more damning than that.

Kristol also previously weighed in on Bush's performance on Iraq while on the Daily Show - "He did drive us into a ditch" - while continuing to insist that Bush should be the guy we let attempt to drive us out. (Surprisingly, we still seem to be in the ditch.) Granted, some might argue that it isn't Bush who has failed so much as the effort to put Kristol's preferred philosophies into practice. But either way, it is high time to stop mincing around the facts, and to acknowledge the extent of the failure.

Stupid Excuses

According to CNN,

Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.

But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years.

Chertoff, fielding questions from reporters, said government officials did not expect both a powerful hurricane and a breach of levees that would flood the city of New Orleans. (See the video on a local paper's prophetic warning -- 3:30 )

"That 'perfect storm' of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight," Chertoff said.

Leaving aside the apparent abject ignorance of everybody in the Bush Administration over the vulnerability of New Orleans to a hurricane, isn't DHS supposed to be on its toes about possible terrorism? This disaster resulted from the failure of three levees. Weather aside, it never occurred to anybody in the Bush Administration or DHS that in a time of high water, a terrorist might use explosives to damage levees at key locations?

It's a constant stream of confessions of rank incompetence.

Surrounding Yourself With "The Best People"

When Bush was elected, many deflected his inexperience by claiming he was excellent at delegating, and would surround himself with competent people. I was reminded of this the other day when I heard Mike Huckabee, governor of Arkansas, use the same line to defend Bush's appointment of Karen Hughes as the envoy in charge of promoting the nation's image in the Islamic world. He responded to questions about her qualification by asserting that she's bright and capable, and would surround herself with good people. And, of course, there's the bang up job Bush has done appointing "good people" to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

I guess, ultimately, the goal is to appoint lots of people who have no real qualification, but are also skilled delegators... and to hope that the people at the bottom of the organizational chart actually turn out to have sufficient competence to perform the tasks delegated down from the top. Still, I would have appreciated it had Bush made a slight exception, and appointed a qualified person to head FEMA. (But hey - he seems like a smart guy, and I'm sure that he has surrounded himself with....)

Go Ahead - Offend My Sensitivities

CJR Daily addresses self-censorship by the networks in relation to the catastrophe in New Orleans:

"The sanitation was unbelievable. The stench in there ... was unbelievable. Dead people around the walls of the convention center, laying in the middle of the street in their dying chairs where they died, right there on their lawn chair. They were just covered up in their wheelchair, covered up, laying there for dead. Babies, two babies dehydrated and died. I'm telling you, I couldn't take it."

Then followed an extraordinary exchange -- not included in the transcript of the interview on MSNBC's Web site -- well worth noting. Stewart mentioned that many of the images Zumbado had shot of the dead and dying "couldn't" be run on the air. Zumbado added that there was much more footage that he could have shot but did not, precisely because he knew it would never make it on the air.

I think in situations like this the media has an obligation to offend our delicate sentitivities, to motivate the public and our "political leaders" to prevent this type of thing from happening again.