Vision

Excerpts from “The shaming of America”, from The Economist print edition September 8th 2005

…Local government must shoulder some of the blame. The authorities in Louisiana have a reputation for confusion, inefficiency and worse. Different authorities are responsible for different levees, for example…This is exactly the same situation along the length of the Sacramento River. Local levee associations are responsible for the safety of the levee only in their territory and the safety of the levees as a whole system is never addressed by one agency. Do we really believe that New Orleans was an anomaly?

…Local incompetence exacerbated the disaster: in Orleans Parish, for instance, where 60,000 households do not own a car, hundreds of city buses which might have shipped out stranded people were left to be swamped by the rising waters... 60,000 households! That translates to a minimum of 120,000 people who were forgotten.

…Still, Washington is mostly at fault. The responsibility for mobilizing the response to a disaster lies squarely with the federal government. And the responsibility for galvanizing the federal government lies squarely with the president... This is not a new concept!

And on the role of the Homeland Security Department…The department's focus on fighting terrorism has also distracted attention from coping with natural disasters, reducing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from a cabinet-level agency into a neglected stepchild. The best illustration of this is its boss: Michael Brown spent nine years at the Arabian Horse Association, before finally being eased out and joining FEMA as general counsel, brought in by its previous head, his college room-mate... “Eased out” is being polite, in truth, he was fired. This is cronyism at its worst.

...The recent transport bill contains some $24 billion-worth of pure pork—including $231m for a “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. Although this sort of thing is endemic in Washington, it has got far worse since the Republicans took over both the White House and Congress... Republicans used to be proud to be known as the party for less government, not more. Obviously, greed has no political boundaries. But we already knew that, didn’t we?

...If Mr. Bush addresses America's failings with the same vigor that he addressed Islamic terrorism in the wake of September 11th, he has a chance of reinvigorating his presidency and restoring respect in his country; if he doesn't, he will go the way of his father, limping wounded into retirement... He won’t. He has no vision.