Tim Russert, who ordinarily is about as tough on the Bush administration as I am on members of my immediate family, is among the newsfolks who seem angered by how little has been done for the injured and displaced in the Gulf Coast. Today on Meet the Press, he interrogated the Homeland Security Chief, Michael Chertoff, who's out there spinning his little heart out, saying things like, "There will be time later to assess blame." That's what I always say when I'm worried about being blamed, too.
And actually, it's true in a way. A lot of the finger-pointing is unconstructive and a waste of energy that might go into saving people who are still stranded, still dying, still without a place to live. But some of it helps. Some of it is a matter of reminding the people in charge that they are in charge and that we're expecting them to act now.
Mr. Chertoff seems to be in a closely-contested race with Michael Brown, Director of FEMA, to see who can sound more clueless about the relief operations. On Thursday night, Brown told reporters that his agency hadn't known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Which I guess means no one at his agency owns a TV set or has access to the Internet. (I don't mean to sound outraged about this…well, maybe I do. I just kinda think the head of FEMA shouldn't be finding out about this kind of thing a day or so after Larry King.) The following day, Brown told TV cameras, "We've provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they've gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day." The New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote, in response to this, "Lies don't get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President."
Brown's credentials for his position seem to be that he needed a job and was friends with the manager of the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. The fact that he had no experience in disaster management — he came off a position as the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian Horse Association — seems to not have troubled anyone.
I'm sorry. I know one of the fruits of political victory is that you get to reward your cronies with well-paid, do-very-little jobs, and that everyone does this. But you're supposed to do it with the ambassadorship to Luxembourg…not with running a department of emergency preparedness. It's especially appalling that they didn't bring in someone with expertise after 9/11 when everyone in America, as one, agreed we needed to beef up that area.
Getting back to Tim Russert and Michael Chertoff: Russert was pretty tough on the guy, at least by Russert standards, and Chertoff sure didn't impress me as being on top of the situation, except maybe in a P.R. sense. Here's a link to one video excerpt from the interview and here's a link to another.
And if you have the time and can stand some heartbreak, here's a link to Russert's interview with Aaron Broussard, who is the president of Jefferson Parish, which is just south of New Orleans. Very sad. I don't know whether everything that can possibly be done is being done…but if so, then everything that can possibly be done is not nearly enough.