FEMA's mantra is that states have to take care of the first 72 hours. Louisiana failed to do that - they didn't even take care of the 48 hours before the storm.
"No-one anticipated the breach in the levees."
All the President would have had to have done to realize that that statement was complete BS, and that many of the people hearing his words knew it was complete BS, was to have watched a half hour of televised coverage Wednesday night - had he done so he would have known that dozens of individuals and organizations have been predicted for years that something like this was going to happen, that the Federal Government drastically reduced spending to improve the levees, and many individuals and organizations have been pointing out the hazards of this decision ever since.
Now, a President has the prerogative of avoiding experience of what ordinary citizens are hearing about his policies - to turn off the television and leave the newspapers on the front porch - but if so, he had better have his advisors doing it for him.
And those advisors HAD to have known that what's happening in New Orleans was going to be a major political problem for the administrating, and if they were in their right minds and he President was willing to listen to them, he would have known better than to make such a statement.
So what happened?
Everybody who's spent a year in the corporate world knows what happened: the CEO is totally out of touch with the reality of what's happing within his organization – utterly clueless – either he's with surrounded himself entierly with syncopates, or if there is anyone still foolish enough to tell him the truth, they are being ignored and probably abused for their efforts - that this is a company going down the tubes because of upper management's inability to accept unpleasant facts.
And if they have been around a while, they know that this problem is at its absolute worst in a privately held company where no one can fire a incompetent child who's succeeded to control of the family business, - and that the employees, customers and vendors are just along for the ride.
And from where I sit, unless there are big changes that's the next three years under this administration.