Katrina and the Waves

No, this is not a nostalgia piece about 1980’s one-hit wonder bands. Rather, this posting represents my first dip back into the political realm, after a summer of book reviews and travel postings. I will make this quick.

If anyone is wondering about the difference between Democrats and Republicans, one need only look at the mismanagement of the Katrina disaster by Louisiana state and local politicians and compare with (a) Guiliani/Pataki after 9/11; and (b) Haley Barbour in Mississippi. Who would you rather be in charge of the first response if your community were devastated?

In New Orleans, the corrupt mayor did not even use the plan that had been developed and tested for the specific scenario that unfolded. Hundreds of city school buses were moved to the lowest lying area of the city, and were never used to evacuate people as called for in the plan. Those buses are under water now. Even though in previous hurricane, when 10,000 people were evacuated to the Superdome and security problems resulted, the mayor did nothing this time around to provide security there.

On Saturday, the President had to demand that the incompetent Democrat governor to order an evacuation. She did not ask for the National Guard and federal troops until after the storm, even though Bush had given her the authority to do so two days before the hurricane. The mayor did not even contact the National Hurricane Center when Katrina was bearing down on his city. To this day, the governor and the mayor are in a public dispute over whether to force people out of their homes. That probably won’t do much to instill confidence among their constituents.

Hillary Clinton, of course, is saying that FEMA should be taken out of the Department of Homeland Security. Never mind that Hillary voted to have FEMA a part of the Department in the first place! The Department itself was Joe Lieberman’s pet project. Bush agreed to create it in the spirit of bipartisanship, even though he opposed the concept from the beginning. So it’s Bush’s fault that FEMA is less effective as part of Homeland than it was when it was an independent agency?

As for the President, he should have returned from vacation a day earlier, if for no other reason than to avoid the bad PR. Does Bush want to make Michael Moore’s job easier? The federal response was about 24 hours behind where it should have been, so Bush doesn’t get a free ride from me either. He probably should fire the heads of Homeland and FEMA and replace them with professional executives, rather than lawyers. The guy at the head of FEMA is clearly way out of his element.

As for rebuilding New Orleans, I’m not sure why we should put tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives in the path of another hurricane. The French Quarter and other areas on relatively higher, more valuable commerical and historic land, could be walled off with bigger, stronger levees. But perhaps much of the population that lives in the most vulnerable areas should be disbursed to safer locations. Tear down the Superdome and build a new stadium in Baton Rouge. Maybe then the Saints could actually have a winning season.