It was a political favor to a friend of Brown and a HUGE mistake.
Granted that the Mayor and Governor are totally incompetent, add the extra bureaucracy of Homeland Security, and a political hack FEMA Director and you have a MANMADE disaster.
I predict that Katrina will be the #1 issue in the next election cycle and if Bush doesn't put some experienced people in charge, the South will go Democratic.
Why would the South "go Democratic"? Do we all have a death wish? The last thing we need is more Democrats mucking things up. The Republicans may not be perfect, but they tend to be a good bit better than the Democrats. This is certainly true of the major figures in this story.