Colossal Failure of Leadership

A Colossal Failure of Leadership
Saving people and maintaining order are the first order of government in any disaster. In New Orleans, neither has been achieved.

WASHINGTON (By Eleanor Clift, Newsweek) September 4, 2005 - I didn’t see the movie “The Day After,” which depicts the desolation and desperation in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. Staring at the images from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is like watching that disaster movie in real time. People trying to survive, scavenging like wild animals, dead bodies stuffed in corners of the Superdome, the governor of Louisiana fighting to hold back tears.

Where is Rudy Giuliani when we need him? We’ve had four years since 9/11 to prepare for a crisis with mass casualties, yet we seem totally unprepared. To be sure, there are countless unsung heroes performing tasks of kindness and going out of their way to help their fellow man. But this was a moment for national leadership, and nobody rose to take charge the way Giuliani did in New York.

This has been a colossal failure of government. President Bush spent Tuesday, the day after Katrina struck, at a Medicare event in Arizona and then he made his way to a San Diego naval base for yet another anniversary tribute to the Greatest Generation. His concession to reality was adding a few words of compassion to his prepared remarks. Meanwhile, the greatest natural disaster in a century was unfolding at sickening speed with television cameras capturing footage of looting reminiscent of the days after the invasion of Iraq. Things were so bad “you almost wonder if Donald Rumsfeld is in charge,” said Marshall Wittmann, an analyst with the Democratic Leadership Council.

Saving people and maintaining order are the first order of government in any disaster, and neither was achieved. The much-touted Department of Homeland Security appeared too caught up in its internal bureaucracy to perform, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) called off its rescue missions Thursday because residents trying to board boats were getting violent. The disorder and lawlessness was breathtaking to watch. At one point, the evacuation of patients from a hospital was halted because of gunfire. Bush talks about “zero tolerance” for looters, but there aren’t enough police to stop them and the jails are under water. One third of the National Guard from the affected states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they’re the ones trained to perform the police functions that restore civil order.

Instead of declaring a national emergency and deploying the military from all those nearby Texas bases, Bush deployed his father and President Clinton for a photo op at the White House as a prelude to a fund-raising tour. Callers to cable shows called the unfolding disaster “our tsunami” and wondered whether other countries would come to our aid the way the American government did when the tsunami hit Asia. We are the richest nation on earth with the resources, as Bush rightly said, “to take care of our business.” Even so, gestures of support are welcome; NEWSWEEK has learned that the former ambassador from Sri Lanka is rallying medical doctors from his country’s expatriate community to go to New Orleans to help. “I figured this is the least we could do to reciprocate for all the help we got,” Ambassador Devinda Subasinghe says.

We’re getting a taste of what poorer parts of the world have experienced along with a glimpse into a frightening future. Scientists say we have entered a cycle of frequent and dangerous storms. September is the peak season for hurricanes, and we’re already through the letter K with Katrina.

Bush’s comment that nobody thought the levees in New Orleans would break is false, and he will regret those words just as Condoleezza Rice did her comment that nobody could imagine a plane flying into a building like a missile. Local authorities and the Corps of Engineers had war-gamed hurricane scenarios and issued repeated warnings about the vulnerability of the levees. Their pleas were turned down and funding cut instead. Now the money will flow. Congressional leaders rushed back to Washington early to pass legislation to free up $10 billion for hurricane relief, a mere down payment on what it will cost to rebuild the stricken areas.

Congress had been planning to eliminate the estate tax, draining billions from a federal budget already reeling under the costs of a war. Marshall Wittmann, who used to advise John McCain, predicts that Bush’s tax-cutting days are over. “We’ve been living in la-la land,” he says. “This is a moment of sobriety when business as usual can’t continue.”