It is becoming clear that the New Orleans catastrophe resulting from hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst natural disasters in our country’s history. As such, I think that it is understandable that the authorities who we hire (through elections and taxes) to manage and respond to problems and disasters were overwhelmed and not able to respond as well as they would have liked.
There. Simple statement – how can you argue with that? Local authorities were overwhelmed. State authorities were overwhelmed. Federal authorities were overwhelmed. And that is the right order, is it not? Don’t we expect local authorities to call on state and federal assistance only when they are overwhelmed? And don’t we expect state authorities to call on federal assistance only when they are overwhelmed? Bottom-up management in action.
And from a top down perspective, we certainly expect the federal government – with its vast resources – to proactively seek to provide assistance to “lesser†entities when it is clear that they are going to be overwhelmed. That is how it has worked for quite a number of years, through quite a number of catastrophes.
Thus far in this post, I can’t imagine that there is very much controversial in what I have written. But this is the point that this probably changes, because I have to say that I am sick and tired of the refusal of this administration to be accountable for anything that it does or does not do. Those who lean right and tend to support President Bush will now (most likely) find controversy in what I have to say.
I assume that mistakes have been made in this effort as are made in every effort. I assume that these mistakes have been made by governments and bureaucracies at all levels – local, state, and federal. Voters at each level will have to hold those people accountable for their performance
It will be up to the local authorities to identify and fix the mistakes that they have made, and they should be held accountable for their performance by local voters. The people of the local parishes in the South will have to hold them up to scrutiny when the time comes.
It will be up to state authorities to identify and fix the mistakes that they have made, and they should be held accountable for their performance by state voters. The people of Louisiana (and other states) will have to hold them up to scrutiny when the time comes.
As for the national media, and the vast majority of the people in this country, the only entity accountable to us is the federal government. It is upon the federal government, and their response to this disaster, that our focus should be maintained. Not that we should spend much energy on it now – right now we should be focused on providing aid to those in need.
Once we have provided the aid required, and have FUNDED THIS AID, then we should focus on the rebuilding effort, decide who should be paying for this effort, and FUND THE REBUILDING EFFORT. We have many precedents to follow regarding how much the federal government should be funding the rebuilding of “at-risk†infrastructure and private property, and we should be following those precedents, or we should be publicly debating and changing the role of the federal government in this regard.
Then, we should be holding our federal government accountable for their performance during this disaster. We should do this in the media and at the voting booth. The fact that this administration is spending its time and effort trying to “spin†things is such a way to re-focus the national media on state and local efforts rather than federal efforts has the top of my head coming off. These people have refused to accept accountability for any action that they have taken in the past 5 years, and now with Americans dead by the thousands, they continue to shirk accountability.
Note that I say “they†here, as it is hard to really focus on President Bush alone. For the past 5 years, we have seen him pointing his finger everywhere else whenever bad things happen, so we have grown accustomed to this new “shared accountability†style. Let me tell you how I feel about shared accountability.
I had a boss for several years with whom I disagreed about many things. Although we had disagreements that were often loud, table-pounding affairs, we also had an abiding respect for one another. He demanded of his top people that when you were wrong and had made a mistake, you admitted it – hat in hand – and you filed it away as a lesson that you had invested yourself in, and a mistake that you would not make again. He used to say that so long as you defended your mistake, you could not learn from it. And if you were going to be a leader, he used to say, your shoulders must be broad enough to carry not only your own mistakes, but also the mistakes of those who report to you. That was the essence of leadership – the courage and strength to be fully accountable for your actions and the actions of those who worked for you. Regarding “shared accountabilityâ€, he had a very simple response: When everybody is accountable, then nobody is accountable.
And that seems to be how this president runs his administration. Let’s have an investigation – let’s investigate ourselves. Let’s study it – by the time the study is done, the press will have moved on to something else, and the American people will have forgotten the issue, and we won’t have to be accountable.
I’m sick of it frankly. Have the guts to stand up and say, “The buck stops here – I am accountable.â€
- The fact is that we have used our National Guard as a foreign occupying force – a job that they were NOT designed to do – and we have stretched our armed forces very thinly. This is not an interpretation of fact, this is a fact. This fact certainly had some impact on the ability of our government to respond rapidly to a disaster that they knew was coming. Accept this and be accountable for it.
- The FEMA director lies to the people (a way of defending the slow response) by saying that nobody could anticipate the break in the levies as. Note that clearly at this stage, they knew that they had a response problem, and were trying to justify the reasons for the slow response. Yet, he had apparently been briefed just days before on the fact that these levy breaks were a likely result of this hurricane – before the hurricane had hit. Accept the fact that you knew it was likely, and that you failed to respond quickly with anything approaching adequate aid. Perhaps adequate assistance would have been impossible anyway?
- Our national focus regarding taxation during the last 5 years has been on cutting taxes. We cut taxes even as we wage war – unprecedented in American history. Part of this effort to cut taxes means that we must find ways to continue to cut funding to programs, in order to try and reduce the huge deficits that this tax-cutting frenzy creates in our national budget. Among the programs that the administration cuts are programs aimed at fixing the very levies that broke. For the first time in 30 years, construction and upgrading of these levies was stopped during this administration. This is a fact, not an interpretation of fact. If you are on the left, you will interpret this fact and say that they did this to fund the tax cuts for the wealthy. If you are on the right, you will interpret this and say that these programs were not effective, and were wasteful. In either case, be accountable.
- In fact, it appears that since about 2002, there has been a fairly loud cry from those in that area that they are sitting ducks for exactly this disaster. They have loudly protested the funding cuts that they have seen stop the sorts of contingency preparedness that was clearly required, and mitigation efforts that had been underway. Again, if I believe in the policies of this administration, then I need to be accountable for the fact that it appears that I may have been wrong on this one – perhaps it was a mistake to stop these programs – perhaps a few more lives could have been saved? Or perhaps not – perhaps the programs were so useless that they would have made no difference at all? I don’t know, but I should be accountable enough to at least ask the question rather than trying to blame someone else.
- And what about the bigger picture here. We have invested so much of our grandchildren’s money in this effort to “fight the terrorists over there instead of over hereâ€, without ever talking about what it costs to do this. Is it possible that in this process, we have taken our eye off of the ball here at home, and have allowed our ability to respond to homeland disasters erode significantly? Is it possible?
I could go on about this, but the bottom line is that I am sick of the lack of courageous leadership within this administration. Courageous leadership would stand up and say something like, “We have a disaster to deal with right now, so I don’t have time for spin. When we are done with triage within this disaster, then I expect the American people to review the performance of me and my administration in this disaster, and I stand singly and solely accountable for the mistakes that we have made, and I share accountability for the things that have gone well with those in my administration.†Wow, now that would be leadership!
But instead of real leadership, we have the president and all of his spin patrol trying to divert attention from themselves, and on to state and local officials.
Shame, shame, shame.
Where is my hero Teddy?
