The Politics of Hurricane Destruction

For your perusal:

John Podhoretz

federal government has taken the brunt of the public criticism for seeming out of touch and uncomprehending in those first few days. But what Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco did and didn't do was worse. They consciously and deliberately assumed an attitude of powerlessness and hopelessness in the face of New Orleans' woes that directly contributed to the lawlessness, chaos and disorder.

Nagin and Blanco acted as if they were impotent bystanders rather than elected officials charged by those who put them in office with maintaining civil order and ensuring the public's safety.

What did they do? They gave angry interviews. They screamed and yelled about the federal government being bad. They cried. They delayed. They said they didn't care very much about looting, and then said they cared a lot about looting, and then didn't do anything about the looting. And they didn't coordinate with each other at all.

Now we're hearing that part of the problem is Nagin and Blanco don't get along, that Blanco never forgave Nagin for supporting her Republican challenger in her gubernatorial bid in 2003.

Hmm, sounds familiar, doesn't it? Here in New York, Rudy Giuliani crossed party lines to support Mario Cuomo over George Pataki and the two had a famously wretched and horrible relationship.

It was terrible. But then came 9/11. And instantly, everything changed. The attack on New York caused both men to suspend their enmity instantly and to make common cause. They were inseparable in the days and weeks that followed, and that famous credit-hog Giuliani was always careful to include Pataki in any and every event, ceremony, meeting and word of praise he participated in, received or doled out.

That's the nature of leadership at a time of genuine crisis.

What's really contemptible about the conduct of Nagin and Blanco — and, to a lesser extent, the conduct of Louisiana Sens. Mary Landrieu and David Vitter — is how self-interested it really was and is.

All these officials are on a knife's edge, their political viability on the line. As the months pass, their failures on the front lines of this disaster are going to be hotly debated. Thus it served their own narrow, selfish, partisan, political interest to act as if they were powerless and overwhelmed and without resources.

What we've seen is a combination of greedy local and state politicians who never could forgive each other for crossing the other in local political campaigning, and then couldn't realize that their personal emnity got in the way of a disaster response, and may have led to the needless loss of life because of a botched preparation and response to Katrina.

UPDATE:
With so many folks making racial hay about the hurricane response, here's a bit of perspective from Paul at Wizbang. He correctly notes that St. Bernard parish was well and truly destroyed by the hurricane:

St. Bernard Parish is (was) 90% white but not a single federal person stepped foot into the parish for almost a week. They still have been largely ignored. And the whole parish was basically destroyed. I read that they were going to bulldoze a section of the Parish that was 4 miles long by 2 miles wide (think about that) and do it before the home owners could even try to retrieve any possessions. They are just going to bulldoze the whole area.

I'd like to see a link for the bulldozing claim, but for comparison's sake, the WTC Ground Zero site is 16 acres. Paul asserts that the authorities are looking to bulldoze 5,120 acres because the devastation was so complete.

The authorities say that 30,000 residences were lost in the hurricane. That's a pretty grim assessment.

UPDATE:
President Bush takes full responsibility for shortcomings in the federal response. Will the state and local officials do the same? I don't think so. He said that to the extent that the federal response was flawed, he takes responsibility. With the media focused on the federal failures, that is all that many people will see and hear. The media will not focus on the botched state and local response, because that would show that the federal response was remarkable under the circumstances. 90,000 square miles affected, hundreds of thousands of people needed to be relocated, military forces and National Guard on scene in many areas within hours, but the lasting media message will be the failure of FEMA and Michael Brown.