Chertoff and Brown are lawyers. They were more concerned about legalisms and bureaucratic turf issues. Once the scope and magnitude of this disaster was known, the federal government should not have trucked any such obstacles to getting the job done, especially saving lives. You can go back and forth as to who should request what first, but ultimately the entire government, federal/state/local, is judged by results. Let the chips fall where they may. If Bush had done that, he would have been lionized by the American public despite a hostile MSM.
I think one of the problems is that they were expecting the normal chain-of-command thing to happen - that is, the lower levels request the higher levels for help, the higher levels authorize it, etc. In this case, the lower levels broke down, probably to an extent unprecedented in our recent history.
People say that FEMA and Homeland Security should have been watching TV for their information! Truly ridiculous - TV is full of rumors and instant reaction things that the government couldn't do anyway. Normally, agencies would rely on officials on the ground to give them the information. However, they clearly couldn't rely on that in NO, nor could they rely on NO officials to exercise their normal law enforcement or any other functions.
There's got to be a plan in place, worked out by Congress, for when the local authority breaks down, as it did in NO in particular and LA in general.
Agreed. Strong leadership takes bold action and sometimes rules, protocol and paperwork need to be secondary concerns.
Aye. Apparently the White House staff spent no small amount of time Friday & Saturday before the storm hit dithering about technical legalities and stupid jurisdictional issues. Sure, things improved once the President got back to Washington, but that was, what, Tuesday? Damage had already been done.
SW