Unfit To Govern

The good folks at the New York Times in an effort to further shift the blame for everything related to hurricane Katrina onto the Bush Administration shines a pretty bright light on what is wrong with the Democratic Party and the Government of Louisiana. The article details some of the contents of about 100,000 pages of documents, records and notes from the Louisiana Governor's office that are being provided to congressional committees looking into Katrina preparedness and response.

Let's start with this little illustration of what matters to National Democrats from page 2 of the Times article.

The struggle with Washington and questions of who was in charge - the state or federal government - emerge frequently in the correspondence. It is also clear that Democrats in Washington recognized that the federal response to the storm provided an opportunity to win some political points.

Aides to Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, called Mr. Mann to discuss strategy, a conversation that indirectly included Mike McCurry, the former press secretary to President Clinton, according to one e-mail message.

"By the weekend, the Bush administration will have a full blown PR disaster/scandal on their hands because of the late response to needs in New Orleans," Mr. Mann wrote on Sept. 1, the Thursday after the storm, attributing that observation to Mr. McCurry.

In the immediate aftermath of the storm Governor Blanco's people were on the phone with the Senate Minority Leader's people strategizing about how play the crisis up as a "pr disaster."

Well here's a pretty good indication of what one of the problems with the governor's response might have been. I think just maybe a little less time and effort working on how to score political hits on the White House and little more time and effort on actually doing something could have made some difference.

As for what is really wrong with the governor's office we need look no further than this statement from Johnny Anderson, Governor Blanco's Chief of Staff:

"The governor needs to stay on message, and that is getting people out of New Orleans, provide stability for them and rebuild," Mr. Anderson wrote on Sept. 1. "The governor must look like the leader at all times."(emphasis mine)

No. You've got that quite wrong. The governor needed to BE a leader, not just look like one. "I'm not a leader but I play one on TV," wasn't what the people of Louisiana needed.

Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 03:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment