Republicans Demand Accountability

While the White House scrambles like mad to cover its butt and avoid any and all questions about what went wrong in the response to Katrina, at least some Republicans are breaking the party line talking points and saying what is obviously true, that the response at the Federal level was appalling and heads need to roll. Robert Novak has this column about those reactions. He writes:

Democrats have seized on the administration’s performance in handling Katrina to bash George W. Bush, but Republicans are not much happier with him. The common complaint is that the President has let the lawyers take over. Chertoff, a former federal judge and assistant attorney general, is a quintessential lawyer who has surrounded himself at Homeland Security with more lawyers. Michael D. Brown, who as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is Chertoff’s subordinate, is also a lawyer. Neither Chertoff nor Brown was experienced in politics or large-scale management before joining the Bush administration.
Chertoff’s inexperience was shown when he said “I’ve got this down” into an open microphone, thinking he was safe because the cameras were off and not realizing his words were transmitted via satellite. He clearly saw himself as an advocate tailoring what he said to a lawyer’s brief.
Political deafness mixed with lawyerly evasion was shown on “Meet the Press” when Chertoff claimed the breaking of the New Orleans levees “really caught everybody by surprise.” Russert cited repeated forecasts of this disaster by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, but Chertoff insisted he did not say what he had just said.
Russert gave Chertoff a good going over, but that performance did not provoke Republican complaints (except for the usual grousing from White House aides). When Republican House members participated in a telephone conference call Sept. 1, the air was blue with complaints about the handling of Katrina. There was much hand-wringing about Republican prospects in the 2006 elections. Politics aside, however, the GOP lawmakers were unhappy with their administration’s performance…
Criticism of FEMA was even voiced at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, of all places. While all other Cabinet members were silent, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson blew the whistle. He said HUD’s readiness to send emergency housing to New Orleans was thwarted by FEMA’s red tape.
Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut is more liberal than nearly all his fellow Republicans, but he has tried to be a Bush loyalist. He is a member of the Homeland Security Committee and chairs the national security subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee. Consequently, it is noteworthy when he accuses the administration of “a real sense of arrogance. Loyalty and never admitting a mistake matters more than the truth. It has a Nixon feel to me.”

Shays is on the money here. This juvenile blather about the “blame game” is a ridiculous talking point designed solely to get the heat off the administration. And it is symptomatic of a disease that has afflicted our government for a long time, regardless of what party is in charge. The politicians expend infinitely more effort engaging in PR campaigns to convince people that they’re doing a good job, or didn’t screw anything up, than they expend on actually doing a good job and trying not to screw things up. It’s not just that we have lawyers running everything, it’s also that we have an army of PR flaks behind them and the whole system is geared to sell an image of competence and engagement rather than create an actual reality that would mitigate the need to sell such an image. They view the task of government as that of a movie director, creating a pleasing fiction for an audience.