Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Bush accepts responsibility for Katrina failures
Bush makes a good political call in accepting responsibility for FEMA's failures during the Katrina crisis. It is good for two reasons:
1. FEMA is a bureaucratic mess. From professional firefighters being given sexual harassment classes before being allowed to go to New Orleans to pass out flyers, to the agency head not knowing about folks being trapped in the convention center when it had been reported on national news countless times for hours, FEMA clearly needs an overhaul from the ground up. That is impossible if you don't acknowledge the problem.
2. The move inoculates Bush against charges of denying his own responsibilities, thus allowing him to challenge state and local officials to do the same. When the smoke clears, it will be apparent that the real failures, the ones that cost lives, occurred at the state and local level.
1. FEMA is a bureaucratic mess. From professional firefighters being given sexual harassment classes before being allowed to go to New Orleans to pass out flyers, to the agency head not knowing about folks being trapped in the convention center when it had been reported on national news countless times for hours, FEMA clearly needs an overhaul from the ground up. That is impossible if you don't acknowledge the problem.
2. The move inoculates Bush against charges of denying his own responsibilities, thus allowing him to challenge state and local officials to do the same. When the smoke clears, it will be apparent that the real failures, the ones that cost lives, occurred at the state and local level.
