We’re posting this due to some of the comments we’ve received in our comments sections and particularly emails (“How can you call yourself a moderate?…You should be saying ‘Good job’ to President Bush….The problem is with the local and state officials and the Democrats and liberals are all trying to blame the President…” etc) from staunch partisans who don’t agree with the Republicans, independents and Democrats who think this administration’s job performance on Hurricane Katrina raises questions that need to be answered — apart from how any other levels of government performed.
Here’s part of a commentary by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough…a GOPer…a former member of Congress. You can read it all here but we’ll give you these excerpts:
As one who has seen these hurricanes up close as a Gulf Coast resident, news reporter and member of Congress — where I got a behind the scenes look at how to run relief operations — I have been trying to connect the dots for those of you who have not been so intimately involved in hurricane recovery efforts.
With so many trying to figure out why so few acted professionally in the first days of this epic crisis, I offer an insider’s view of who is to blame for this national disgrace.
We begin with Harry Truman who famously declared that the buck always stops at the president’s desk. For those who now define the term conservative as unwavering support for George W. Bush, even this suggestion is maddening.
But the bottom line is that despite the fact the president was strapped with two governors who bungled this crisis badly, in the end it is the president who sends in the National Guard and FEMA relief.
The president’s suggestion that the size of this storm caught all by surprise just doesn’t get it. His administration was 48 hours late sending in the National Guard and poor Americans got raped and killed because of those mistakes.
A painful assessment from a supporter of the president, but also true.
But he’s not done yet:
Secondly, the first responders in any hurricane are local and state officials. When Florida was struck by four hurricanes last year, Governor Jeb Bush was nothing short of spectacular. Louisiana Governor Blanco was breathtakingly clueless as were other Louisiana officials. The deaths of many lay on their doorsteps.
FEMA’s Michael Brown also shoulders the burden for the suffering in New Orleans. His claim that no one knew of the suffering on the ground until Thursday defies logic. America knew the crescent city was drifting toward chaos on well before Tuesday. Why didn’t the man in charge of disaster relief know the same thing?
One state over, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour continues to claim that Katrina caught him by surprise, telling one reporter that it was after all a cat one storm after crossing Florida. That useless fact doesn’t erase the fact that the entire Gulf Coast was put on alert as early as Friday that this storm would be historic.
If Barbour thought Katrina would be little more than a category one storm, then he is not to be trusted organizing his sock drawer — let alone the most tragic natural disaster to ever hit his state.
There’s more. Read the rest yourself.
But it’s further proof that those who raise tough questions and demand answers are exercising their rights and RESPONSIBILITIES in this DEMOCRACY and are not playing a “blame game.”
UPDATE: THIS may be closer to the truth than you think (and we’re not just linking to it because it’s by an advertiser…)
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.