I’ve waited a couple of weeks to write my analysis of Katrina failures, so that we could sift through the first round of rumors, straw men and shallow commentary.
But I’m now ready to issue my report card.
Unlike some liberal or progressive commentators, I don’t claim that state and local officials deserve no blame. It’s not an either/or, in which we can only give one person, or one level of government, low marks.
In fact, there’s plenty of blame to pass out, federal, state and local — and past governments as well as present. And there’s blame to go around for post-disaster analysis and commentary both inside and outside of government.
President George W. Bush — F. Look beyond the “My Pet Goat” deer in the headlights response. Beginning with cutting Army Corps of Engineers funding for Louisiana levee work, then on from not recognizing what could happen before Katrina hit, to not getting back to the White House (after those fibs in 2003-04 about how he could run the country from Crawford), to a slow response after he did get back, to buck-passing, to immediately going into “spin” mode — calling in Karl Rove to run the public relations operation to salvage his opinion, then on to naming Rove as head of the reconstruction effort — complete with no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other companies, Bush has handled just about every aspect of the situation wrong. And let’s not forget deliberately (and possibly illegally, without declaring a national emergency) running roughshod over prevailing wage laws for the rebuilding.
Fortunately, as with New York City, it appears initial casualty estimates were too high. Otherwise, that “F” would be even sadder.
And speaking of casualties, does Bush agree that AIDS, gays and abortions caused Katrina to hit? Seeing as some of the more obnoxious far-right preachers are claiming that, and he hasn’t repudiated this part of his political base …
Halliburton — F. No-bid contracts? We’ve already seen the skimming, to put it politely, that’s been happening in Iraq with Halliburton no-bid contracts. I don’t need to wait a month to give the company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney a big fat F.
Former President Bill Clinton — C-. While I don’t doubt that he would have responded better to the situation, he is tied to the disaster through his own cuts to ACE funding. That rating includes failing to get Americans to recognize that global warming was and is serious enough to necessitate the Kyoto Protocol as the first step in fighting it, as many atmospheric scientists say global warming has made some contribution to increasing hurricane severity.
I mean, we all know that, like a petulant, pouting 6-year-old, Bush refuses to believe in scientific facts that don’t fit his ideology. But Clinton knows better.
Also, in a fact that many alleged liberals like to ignore, Clinton was the one who started privatizing the U.S. Army by contracting quartermaster services to Halliburton. True, Bush has expanded on it, and further loosened oversight, but it didn’t start with him.
The Army Corps of Engineers — D. Many liberal commentators are touting the ACE as the “could have been” hero if it had gotten the levee funding. This overlooks the fact that the Corps is actually responsible for the severity of the flooding through channelizing the Mississippi and draining south Louisiana wetlands, destroying a natural barrier that would have lessened tidal surges. It’s especially ironic, if not hypocritical, to see any environmentalists tout the wisdom of the Corps. We could actually do more to preserve New Orleans if we would eliminate the ACE and get rid of about half of its work on the Mississippi in the last 50 years, as it is arguably the most environmentally-unfriendly agency in the federal government.
Karl Rove — F. If you want a Machiavellian political genius, give him an A (except for his own slow response on Katrina).
Unfortunately, although disaster relief calls for anything but that, Bush has determined that’s what the country is going to get.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco — B-. Despite the Bush blame game, she did declare a state of disaster already Aug. 26. Once the hurricane hit, she generally did the right things, above all hiring Clinton’s Federal Emergency Management Agency director, James Lee Witt, to serve in a similar role for the state during the duration of hurricane cleanup.
However, it looks like state advance planning for the hurricane was lackadaisical, getting her the grade I gave. And, she might deserve worse, but has avoided too much of the spotlight so far. Anyway, not all of what happened can be passed back up the line. And, anybody native to Louisiana has known about the ticking hurricane time bomb for New Orleans.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin — C-. What I just said about Blanco holds true in spades here. Let’s also not forget that this man voted for Bush AND donated $1,000 to his campaign in 2000. He also, while claiming to be a Democrat, supported Republican candidate Bobby Jindal for governor against Blanco in 2003. (More on why I mention this in a minute.)
I think Nagin can be most faulted for not planning to have the Morial Convention Center, as well as the Superdome, become a shelter, and for not having a transportation plan for people to get out of New Orleans. (Of course, this hinged on state or federal officials already having places to which these people could be transported.)
Meanwhile, after his initial rant, he met with Bush and sure has been quiet afterward. Is he getting a cut, somewhere? Well, this is New Orleans and Louisiana.
Michael Brown, former FEMA director — D. Did he do horribly? Yes. Was he appointed as a political hack? Yes. But, I don’t grade him lower because he was left out on an island by his immediate superior …
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff — D-. A New Orleans mock hurricane had been “war-gamed” earlier this summer by his department. If the Katrina response was the best he and it could do after practice, and he’s willing to dump all the blame on Brown, then he deserves to be ranked a notch lower than Brownie.
Conspiracy theorists, wrath of God preachers, “never in America” folks, etc. — Fs across the board. While Bush did many things wrong, and while I have no doubt there were isolated race-related incidents as part of recovery, rescues, etc., there was no organized racial conspiracy in hurricane response. People of all ethnic backgrounds were caught in New Orleans. And while the city, and Orleans Parish, are black majority, neighboring Jefferson and Plaquemines parishes are white majority.
What it was, was a class-based disaster. Poor of all races got hit the hardest. At the same time, class is tangential to race, with more of the poor, per capita, being minorities.
As for the fire and brimstone preachers, AIDS, gays in general, or abortions, whether in New Orleans or across the country, did not cause Hurricane Katrina. If you really claim to believe in an omnipotent divinity who was that wrathful, don’t you think he (or she, for that matter) could do more of a “surgical strike” on the offenders only? And besides, haven’t you read Jesus’ parable about leaving the wheat and tares standing together?
On the other hand, the United States has no special protections against disasters. Nor is there anything to prohibit our country, or sections of it under duress, from dissolving into Third World chaos. Maybe a few people will wake up, both conservative and liberal, and realize all sorts of things can happen to America — no invincibility guaranteed. (This part of the grade could probably be passed out to a large majority of our country, at least in part.)
The mainstream media — D and possibly worsening. The first couple of days of coverage, with TV news doing what it does well, were great — both for hurricane-site coverage and an overview of what Bush wasn’t doing.
But the mainstream media then went back to its earlier passiveness in the face of Bush, failing to ask tough follow-up questions to its earlier tough questions. The mainstream media, especially of the Washington-New York axis, apparently decided once more that a story deserved a “script” and it would write it. Michael Brown got designated as the bad guy/fall guy, and after he fell, the coverage fell a notch too.
Then the media went on to tap Nagin as the designated heroic Democratic foil to Bush, ignoring that even though he’s a black big-city mayor, he certainly appears Republican, and that he didn’t do perfectly, either.
Non-mainstream media — D- (conservative)/D+ (liberal). Blogs and such on both sides of the political divide have come up short on this issue, though conservative ones have been worse.
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