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Here is why I get aggravated by Newt:

Right after Katrina, he was on TV trashing the President (and not Blanco or Nagin) about the poor response to Katrina. He then said "what we need is an economic Marshall Plan for the Gulf Coast."

Now, I don't know about you, but I translate that into LOTS of money being spent by the government, which is, of course, what the Marshall Plan was.

Fast forward to this year, with all of the talk about the waste and fraud in the hurricane relief programs, which were passed because of pressure from the public and aided and abetted by statements like Newt's.

OK, so then what does Newt say? "Government can't manage big programs like this and when they try, corruption and waste is inevitable."

Now Rob, this is a perfect example of why I am not too fond of the guy. This was an obvious contradiction, and I have never heard him explain why he took such two opposing views, although opportunism does sneak into my brain as a possible reason.

This isn't necessarily a contraction. Both statements are completely true. The Gulf Coast "did" (and still does) need that "Marshall Plan", and handling the money through the in-place bureaucracy did (and does) result in tons of waste.

The way to handle those two supposedly disparate items is to establish a temporary commission to run said "Marshall Plan", with authority OVER the bureaucracies involved--and NOT the "standard bureaucracy". I don't recall the Marshall Plan specifics, but I think it may have been handled that way.

(After checking Wikipedia) "Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law on April 3, 1948, establishing the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) to administer the program."

The money was turned over to European goverments, with oversight both by the governments AND the ECA. So it appears Truman did exactly what I thought was an effective solution.

Your observation of Newt's commentary during Katrina is astute, Ms. Marple. Newt is a politician. The democrats in charge during Katrina totally screwed the pooch and then blamed it on Bush. They suceeded with a lot of help from the media wing of the Democrat Party.

What Newt would do is realize this and move the discussion to the future - a Marshall plan so that Bush could recover from the media onslaught and spin.

When you think about it - a Marshall plan is what happened with billions of Federal dollars sent to the coast States. Newt just labled it - a "marshall plan." To me, this was a wise move and the Bush administration should have used that idea to recover from the unfair, abet reality, that he was blamed for the Democrats' failure to rescue the people ahead of time - before the storm hit.

In the end, I think Americans realized the Democrats screwed it up in moving out folks before the storm came. Newt was moving on to the present - to where the Bush Adminisration would come in to save the day, regardless, which was the smart political thing to do.

The slogan of the Bush administration should have been - "yes, the democrats screwed this up, but it is not the fault of the victims. We will make up for thier incompetence with a Marshall plan.

It would have been appropriate to set up an executive team to manage all of the Federal funds. When a local government is shown to be incompetent, the managers give them less say in how the Fed funds are spent. When the local government is competent, the managers for the area allow the locals more control.