Katrina and leadership

A nice take on the Mike Brown/Bush/Katrina fiasco at the Centrist Coalition.

The latest revelation that the President was told by Brown that there were doubts about the levies surrounding New Orleans and the ability to respond, is IMO, the smoking gun. As David Gergen put it, the fact that the President of the United States did not ask any questions in the final briefing before the disaster is most troubling and further exposes a leadership style from this President that in many ways has failed the country that put its' trust in him.

We now know the statements from the White House that Katrina was a 9/11 like surprise that couldn't be prepared for is simply untrue, and although Mike Brown's level of blame isn't clear, his failure as the head of FEMA was the least of the government's problems before the Hurricane. The President was asleep at the wheel and relied too much on a former judge with little administrative experience and Brown, whose own qualification are questionable, to get the job done.

For more, click on the link. I don't necessarily agree with their assessment that Rudy Giuliani has proven he's up to the job because he managed an ungovernable city through an unimaginable crisis -- the federal government is orders of magnitude more complex than New York City -- but there's a lot of food for thought there.

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katrina, bush, giuliani, fema, politics, midtopia