Sturm und Drang on Katrina is a bipartisan affair
■"Clinton Draws Heat in Role Of a Conspicuous Critic: GOP Sees Political Motives as She Assails Disaster Response," by Dan Balz, Washington Post, 8 September 2005, p. A12.■"After Katrina, Anger Within the GOP: Slow Response and a Politically Tone-Deaf Administration Worry Lawmakers," op-ed by Robert D. Novak, Washington Post, 8 September 2005, p. A29.
■"A CEO's Weaknesses," op-ed by David Ignatius, Washington Post, 7 September 2005, p. A25.
■"We Stand Ready for Our Next Disaster," editorial cartoon by Tom Toles, Washington Post, 8 September 2005, p. A28.
I told you the 2008 presidential campaign began with Katrina, and my harsh words for Bush brought out the usual Republican cries that I abandoned my "analysis" for "rants."
Well, let me rant some more: it's perfectly fine for Hillary to castigate the administration for their poor performance. Calling it "political" is just plain goofy. Of course it's political. She's a frickin' politician-just like Bush and Cheney!
Here's her offending words:
"They [Bush administration] do believe that people should rely on state and local response and private charities. I think that is a recipe for disaster . . . There was nobody willing to take responsibility to work with state and local officials to make sure they were prepared."
Sounds pretty accurate to me. That's basically the Bush bias: go local, go private. Okay for problems that aren't too big and can be dealt with incrementally. But that's not a disaster. There, if you wait for the locals to get tapped out, it can quickly become too late to prevent real tragedy from unfolding.
In a connected world, incremental responses to exponential problems are a disaster.
But the bigger charge here is one of too much delegation and trust extended to locals, assuming they would get their stuff together on their own. Might work in some places, but doomed to disaster-it would seem-in other places, especially if they're impoverished or full of corrupt/inept officials.
Anyway, plenty of GOP politicians are ticked-off as well (Bush is surrounding himself with too many lawyers, and in certain jobs like FEMA or DHS, maybe they're not the best leaders), and they should be. The only way the GOP can lose the South is to screw up things like Katrina, so let's be honest here: Bush's ramped-up effort is good leadership and good politicking-something this White House has never been shy about with Rove (Mr. Non-stop Campaign).
Bush's bigger weakness here is that Katrina shows the danger of the distant CEO as president approach, as Ignatius points out in his balanced piece: Bush the strong leader, but Bush administration not strong on follow-through. Bold ideas, bold decisions, but not good execution or even-as with Iraq-solid explanation.
This analysis dovetails with my own previous blogging on Katrina and the Bush administration: strong leader, but not surrounded by solid people-thus the weak follow-through.
That's basically the gist of the Toles cartoon: The DHS leader stands in front of the white board with his helmut one, saying "We stand ready for our next disaster." On the board behind him is the statement, "We don't thing anybody could have predicted ___________."
Bold statement, not a good feeling on follow-through.
With System Perturbations of any magnitude, my rule is, "No sense in trying to predict vertical shocks, just get good at running down the horizontal scenarios."