As noted in the post by our co-blogger Jack Grant below (make sure to read the links on it if you haven’t already since it includes a must read link to his site), President Bush has taken responsibility for the federal blungles in the Hurricane Katrina disaster — which was a disaster in more ways than one:
WASHINGTON -President Bush said Tuesday that “I take responsibility” for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government’s ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attack.
“Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government,” Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of
Iraq.“To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said.
The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government’s ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.
“Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That’s a very important question and it’s in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond,” Bush replied.
He said he wanted to know both what went wrong and what went right.
As for blunders in the federal response, “I’m not going to defend the process going in,” Bush said. “I am going to defend the people saving lives.”
He praised relief workers at all levels. “I want people in America to understand how hard people worked to save lives down there,” he said.
A word on some of that:
- Bush has done the right thing by admitting responsibility, as the person who is supposed to the the in effect CEO of the American government.
- Polls show that most Americans want an independent commission to investigate what went wrong. That doesn’t mean a commission stacked with more Republicans on it and set up by the Republicans or one set up by the Democrats and stacked against the Republicans. That means one both sides can agree on. Republicans setting up their own in Congress (while some repeat the “blame game” mantra which is a sign of trying to discredit those who raise questions) and saying it’s bipartisan without most Democrats going along with it won’t do. And if they do it, it will lack legitimacy in the view of many Americans — and we’re not just talking about partisan Democrats. Not to mention it’ll lack credibility in the eyes of the world.
- GWB has a point. We all give credit to the people saving lives. In fact, Mr. President, it’d be hard to find anyone in the U.S. who doesn’t admire the people who were and are saving lives. But that does not mean we can minimize, excuse, or shove under the rug the names, identities and jobs of the federal, state and local officials who did not do their jobs, and agencies of these levels of government that either responded poorly or had no idea how to respond while people were drowning.
Americans need to know everything that went wrong, which officials didn’t act quick enough or acted poorly, and the best way to respond in the future. And those who insist upon this aren’t playing a “blame game” but are involved in a serious process to try and make emergency and disaster response better so more lives could be saved in future catastrophies.
From a political standpoint, it’s a smart move to admit responsibility and (excuse the expression) move on (with a small “M” and a small “O”). But moving on means moving on to the high-stakes business of doing a kind of autopsy on the levels of government to note what the fatal problems were in detail, make the let-the-chips-fall-where-they may-findings public, and ensure that policies and safeguards are put into place.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.