Brownie Points
Earlier this week (Wednesday, I believe) Scott "Scottie" McClellan accused a prominent member of the White House Press Corps of trying to play the "blame game" (see how many supposedly ordinary citizens are using that phrasing in letters to the editor around the country now) by asking whether or not the President retained full confidence in Michael "Brownie" Brown (I swear that these are actual nicknames that Dubya uses), head of FEMA. The reporter, of course, was asking because the level of criticism of FEMA's handling of the post-Katrina situation has risen, and late last week, Bush openly put his support behind Brownie (using that name). The whole thing got a little ugly in the briefing room, but that's another matter (neither Scottie nor the reporter in question came out smelling much better than downtown New Orleans, in my opinion, nor was either less poisonous).
Brownie has been kicked back up to D.C. by his boss, Michael Chertoff (I have never heard him called "Mikey" or any other such thing, so leave the Life commercials aside). Whether or not the White House admits to having or even did have a hand in that decision is irrelevant. If the President didn't order it, Chertoff, a cabinet member, certainly did, and that's a smack in Brownie's face. Some, however, have suggested that Brownie, the man who was, shortly before getting a position with FEMA, fired from a position in which he managed some aspect of horse show judging, might be the Republican Party's fall guy on this. Maybe, but if ever this administration has had a chance to lean on a less substantial scapegoat, I have not heard of the incident.
The Mayor of New Orleans screwed up a little. The state of Louisiana (I understand that other states were hit, as were other cities in LA, but I want to look here at the Big Easy because it is also the Big One) screwed up a little. The federal government screwed up a lot. That puts the bulk of the blame at the federal level, to my eyes, and that includes appointments by a man who claimed during one of the 2004 presidential debates that he had not made a single mistake during his first term. Let's engage in the blame game a little (sorry, Scottie, but I can't beam the survivors up, and neither can you).
The local mistake was in failing to understand and properly implement—in a timely fashion—the existing (and quite insufficent) disaster plan. The mayor called for an evacuation only two days before Katrina hit New Orleans, but there was neither the time nor the travel infrastructure to effect such a mass migration of citizens.
The state's error was much the same as the city's. A plan was on the books, yet it remained there days after it should have been acted on. State officials bear some of the blame, and clearest among those is the governor.
The federal failure was of on a grander scale, for two reasons. First, the delay in local and state plans should have placed the feds, most notably FEMA and DHS, on highest alert and sent both agencies into a flurry of action, possibly involving the federalizing of the remaining state guard and reserve so that they could move in immediately. Let's face it: FEMA, DHS, and the military have the people and the machines to get into any location in the country inside of a day of an incident. Reporters managed it without helicopters, and the military has helicopters and manpower. Second, the feds had the same amount of warning as the state and local agencies, yet they have vastly greater budgets. There was time to prepare for the response. Hell, there was time to aid in the evacuation!
Pretty much everyone screwed up, but the man whose job it is to handle these types of situations was, along with his agency, AWOL for days. Brownie's back in Washington, and the Coast Guard has a man in charge. Things are looking up now, or at least they are looking less down. Will this move score "Brownie" points with a public more distressed than ever before with the domestic policies and management of the federal government? I doubt it. Katrina may have petered out, but its full force has yet to his Washington. Justly or not, that will happen soon, and some as-yet-unidentified heads will roll. Maybe a little DNA testing or dental records will help us identify the casualties of the political storm to come.
Brownie has been kicked back up to D.C. by his boss, Michael Chertoff (I have never heard him called "Mikey" or any other such thing, so leave the Life commercials aside). Whether or not the White House admits to having or even did have a hand in that decision is irrelevant. If the President didn't order it, Chertoff, a cabinet member, certainly did, and that's a smack in Brownie's face. Some, however, have suggested that Brownie, the man who was, shortly before getting a position with FEMA, fired from a position in which he managed some aspect of horse show judging, might be the Republican Party's fall guy on this. Maybe, but if ever this administration has had a chance to lean on a less substantial scapegoat, I have not heard of the incident.
The Mayor of New Orleans screwed up a little. The state of Louisiana (I understand that other states were hit, as were other cities in LA, but I want to look here at the Big Easy because it is also the Big One) screwed up a little. The federal government screwed up a lot. That puts the bulk of the blame at the federal level, to my eyes, and that includes appointments by a man who claimed during one of the 2004 presidential debates that he had not made a single mistake during his first term. Let's engage in the blame game a little (sorry, Scottie, but I can't beam the survivors up, and neither can you).
The local mistake was in failing to understand and properly implement—in a timely fashion—the existing (and quite insufficent) disaster plan. The mayor called for an evacuation only two days before Katrina hit New Orleans, but there was neither the time nor the travel infrastructure to effect such a mass migration of citizens.
The state's error was much the same as the city's. A plan was on the books, yet it remained there days after it should have been acted on. State officials bear some of the blame, and clearest among those is the governor.
The federal failure was of on a grander scale, for two reasons. First, the delay in local and state plans should have placed the feds, most notably FEMA and DHS, on highest alert and sent both agencies into a flurry of action, possibly involving the federalizing of the remaining state guard and reserve so that they could move in immediately. Let's face it: FEMA, DHS, and the military have the people and the machines to get into any location in the country inside of a day of an incident. Reporters managed it without helicopters, and the military has helicopters and manpower. Second, the feds had the same amount of warning as the state and local agencies, yet they have vastly greater budgets. There was time to prepare for the response. Hell, there was time to aid in the evacuation!
Pretty much everyone screwed up, but the man whose job it is to handle these types of situations was, along with his agency, AWOL for days. Brownie's back in Washington, and the Coast Guard has a man in charge. Things are looking up now, or at least they are looking less down. Will this move score "Brownie" points with a public more distressed than ever before with the domestic policies and management of the federal government? I doubt it. Katrina may have petered out, but its full force has yet to his Washington. Justly or not, that will happen soon, and some as-yet-unidentified heads will roll. Maybe a little DNA testing or dental records will help us identify the casualties of the political storm to come.
Ignited by Andrew Purvis at 2:07 PM
1 Comments:
You make a great point, James. Roads and highways were jammed, as we could see in news coverage from the two days preceding Katrina's landfall in Louisiana. What the federal government has, however, is superior airlift capacity. By utilizing airplanes and military (guard and reserve) helicopters, the federal government could have aided in a way that not even the state could have. It's true, however, that governors have command of their own states' guard forces, and in that sense, more weight falls on the governors of affected states than some are willing to place there. Still, a federalized guad could have pulled Chinook helicopters and military transport planes from around the nation. Would that have helped more than, perhaps, 20 or 30 thousand? Probably not, but that is a lot of people—people who would not have been trapped in their homes or adding to the congestion on the roadways. As I see it, much comes down to available resources, and the federal government has the greatest resources of the three (major) tiers.
This reminds me, however, of a story I learned while researching Hiroshima back in 9th grade, which would have been 1984. I may be off on time by two hours, but I will err on the side of heroism. A pilot awakened by the blast of Little Boy dove out of his second-story window, only to find his airfield barracks had been driven one floor lower. He waited a while and soon found the airfield being approached by "the walking dead," as he descibed them.
Hopping into the best plane he could find—a two-seat trainer that had had its fuselage bent 22 degrees by the force of the blast—he flew over 90 minutes to get to another airfield, where he alerted others to the plight of the people of Hiroshima. He then spent 16 hours flying transport flights of wounded before he was pulled, exhausted, from the flight line.
Imagine if we had put that kind of effort into an evacuation, beginning the moment the mayor ordered people out of the city. How many more lives might have been saved?
The problem, as is always present in such cases, is that we look at this in hindsight. My first inkling of any serious trouble to come was the tail end of the news conference in which the evacuation was (not very urgently) announced. I had no idea for another eight hours how serious the risks were to people there. Am I that much less to blame than those who had the power to order extreme measures?
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