The media was relentless in blaming Bush, Republicans and everyone else except the real culprit, namely New Orleans Mayor and now Federal Prison Inmate, Ray Nagin.
I seem to recall that the "Reverend" Jackson even accused Bush and Cheney of bombing the levees to hurt the "Chocolate" city and kill black people.
What a fiasco.
I blame the mayor and governor. Joe Bastardi predicted Friday night prior exactly what would happen. Bush had to call the governor and the mayor who is now in jail? They both have freaking no brains and allowed all those people to be killed.
This is what I absolutely could not stand about the Bush administration. They would let the media paint them badly at every turn with no pushback whatsoever. On and on for years.
No “war room”, narrative control, spokespeople who were worth a damn, nothing.
The result of what happened from Katrina would have been the same even if Obonzo had been sitting in his Rainbow Palace.
I am still stunned years later, that the liberals and the media politicized a hurricane.
Even though state and local officials are supposed to take the lead on dealing with disasters, and even though the governor and mayor were both Democrats, Bush and Republicans were blamed for everything which went wrong in New Orleans.
If Bush stood up for himself the way Trump is, the history of Katrina would be far different.
I saw (was there) more Individuals and charities, mostly churches, helping more than i saw government officials?
Brown’s emergency management experience was totally inadequate for being the head of FEMA.
Also, it is important to note that the emergency response to Hurricane Ivan was a disaster. The evacuation plan was completely f-ed up from the start and thousands of people were left stranded for more than a day on the side of the road. Some elderly evacuees died during evacuation. It was the completely screw-up of the Ivan evacuation that led to the extremely poor voluntary evacuation response by the public to Katrina.
Watching the helicopter video of the evacuation from NO, the two lanes leaving the city, packed not moving, the left lanes wide open on cars, I thought, wow these people can’t figure out to shut down those lanes to incoming, and open two more lanes to outbound?
The idiocy was going to end in disaster
And whoever in the bush admin who was doing PR didn’t - one -figure out that these people were complete idiots, and - two - get out ahead of it
Stupidity
Lots of people on here blamed him, too. Or at least slammed his appearance before congress.
Start with a natural disaster site, New Orleans (N.O.), waiting to happen. While not entirely below sea level, much of the impoverished high-density (9th Ward) areas were and are such.
Next, have a culture that comes close to celebrating corruption and cronyism. Lagniappe is a well-known term for something extra but it also means bribery. Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards was a US Rep. & 4 term governor and still very popular politician even after being Federally convicted of racketeering with a 10 year prison term in 2001. He was popular enough to have won the 1st stage US House District 6 Primary in 2014 (plurality) but was defeated in the run-off.
Now add a multi-decade history of single-party rule with an emphasis on spreading the money for keeping various pressure group LEADERS well paid.
N.O. was getting Federal money for decades to maintain the levies and pumps yet it was a given that some to a lot of that money went elsewhere. After all, N.O. had not had anything close to a direct hit since forever and having the best float in the Mardi Gras is prime!
So now the fecal matter is about to hit the air circulation device and the city and state leaders know that they have a history of smelly actions. Now, in my honest opinion, if the President at the time had been a Democrat, I believe that the disaster would have been local. The requests for Federal assistance would have been automatic by Governor Blanco and the death toll would have been reduced. The left-leaning MSM would have crucified Mayor Nagin and N.O. corruption, but it would have mostly stopped there.
However, it being a GOP President, both Louisiana and N.O. had the fear of discovered corruption by a hostile Dept. of Justice and wanted to wait to see how bad the results of Katrina really were. This delay was deadly since, like the "Golden Hour" of Emergency Care, delay allows more time for further levy breaks and flooding. Delay keeps the size of the disaster from being better accessed.
Yet the MSM saw the disaster unfold and only took notice of the delayed Federal response. Nagin & Blanco were front and center to direct attention away from their failures and the MSM was fully coopted in their defense.
I hope he wrote a book.
It sounds to me like he feels guilty for his incompetence and he knew his job was more than he should have assumed.
If he was smart he should just say: "Bush's fault". Then he'd be a hero.
"Had I left the Federal Emergency Management Agency …"
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
As a side note to this thread, please consider the following. The states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to tax and spend for vote-winning federal relief funding.
Note that supporters of federal emergency relief will point to the Congressional Act of 1803 as proof that such legislation must be constitutional, never any mention of a clause in Congress’s constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers to justify such relief.
But what they overlook is that the legislation evidently didn’t provide funding for relief purposes. I understand that all that the act did for relief purposes was to move the deadline for merchants in Portsmouth, Maine to pay their federal taxes (tariffs) to a later date, these merchants undoubtedly affected by the Portsmouth fire of 1802.
Note that I think that federal emergency relief is a good idea and needs to be considered. But the states need to amend the Constitution for such things so that Congress can legitimately tax and spend for such purposes.