Caring does not have to be an emotional display. Far from it! Insufficent caring is a very measurable sort of thing. All you have to do is look at priorities. Do you mean to tell me that you believe the response would have been just the same if the catastrophe had affected the rich rather than (mostly) the poor? Do you really think that now that now the surrounding wetlands will be restored and that the coast will be off limits for development and that the oil refineries won’t expand into the polluted space?

Well, we disagree – but I have to say that I do respect your point of view. If the context were different, and there wasn’t so very much background material and history here, I might agree with you more than I do. Thanks for your input.

What we’re looking at is bureaucracy rather than outright corruption. Not to be too contrarian, but what government agency doesn’t run on red tape? If an extra level of work-defying red tape got in the way of smooth operation, then sure, that’s bad. That’s inarguable. I wouldn’t chalk it up to corruption, however.

Ultimately, leadership is in the eye of the beholder. Some of us are more impressed and inspired by a leader who will, well, “feel our pain” and beat his breast more publicly. That’s fine, but look at Mayor Nagin, who sort of went off the deep end there and showed himself to be TOO vulnerable. Not that I’m blaming him for the hurricane or its aftermath here, but the guy didn’t show a whole lot of strength in a crisis.

“On a very fundamental level, I just don’t believe that he cares about most Americans.”

Care in one hand and spit in the other, and we know which one will fill up faster; the amount someone CARES about something isn’t as important as what he DOES about it. Who cares how much he cares? I’m concerned about what he does. Insufficient caring isn’t a measurable character flaw.

Anyhow, thanks for the discussion and clarification; I’ll put you on my blogroll and look forward to future posts.

I’ll just tell you my opinion on the questions you ask.

The city didn’t flood immediately, during the hurricane. It took a while for the levees to break. They broke exactly where scheduled repairs never took place. It is possible that there would have been flooding in any case, but I suspect it would not have been as catastrophic as it was. I don’t blame Bush for the hurricane. I blame him for his choice of priorities.

If, as you say, FEMA wasn’t in fact “gutted,” then where was Homeland Security, and who was ready to do FEMA’s previous job? If it was the responsibility of Homeland Security, then were were they?

5 of the 8 people in positions of top responsibility at FEMA are cronies with no disaster experience. It’s not my field, so I couldn’t tell you who would have been better qualified. Perhaps you could ask any of the people who quit FEMA after the folding out of “redundant functions” – they do have some things to share. For example, almost a year ago, Pleasant Mann said “Over the past three-and-one-half years, FEMA has gone from being a model agency to being one where funds are being misspent, employee morale has fallen, and our nation’s emergency management capability is being eroded. Our professional staff are being systematically replaced by politically connected novices and contractors.” Rather than increasing effectiveness, the move to Homeland Security seems to have added layers of paperwork and organization that likely delayed FEMA’s response to Katrina. Workers were made to travel to remote locations to be “processed” and placed in a pool from which he is dispatched. Bad communications-control-command meant that officials knew less than the average American, who saw it all on tv (and reporters didn’t seem to have much trouble getting in!).

Such corruption and time delays meant that in practice, FEMA was turning away help just when it was needed. A hospital ship in the harbor was ignored, firefighters sent back, help from other cities and states, and so on.

You ask what else President Bush could have done, and there are really so many answers to that question. For me, it boils down to leadership for all Americans, all Americans.

In this case, he didn’t even bother with the appearance of leadership. It would have been a huge boost if he would have made himself the man a whole country turned to. Instead, while people were dying, he was eating cake and playing the guitar. He was so out of touch he praised “Brownie” on a job well done. His first (delayed) visit was a high-flyover. Even Rudy (New York. 9/11) knew what to do at such a time – get there, tell people to remain calm, show that someone is on watch. If there is a delay, tell people. Get teams to circumvent the problems, have an airplane banner tell people what to do, whatever. Be the leader. There are lots of things he could have done that would have been better than staging a photoop that stopped rescue operations.

Would I support him if he admitted his own mistakes? I won’t dissemble. The answer is no, I wouldn’t. I think he is a puppet for big money in any case (he’s not the only one). However, it would show maturity – and possibly compassion – on his part if he could honestly assess what he was doing once in a while. It might also signal the possibility of a governmental community capable of actual dialogue and discussion – a community that grounds its decisions in reality, not ideology that is beneficial only to the few.

An acceptable level of responsibilty? That’s not really the issue to me. It’s not “how much” so much as it is whether he can garner enough insight into himself (and others!) to authentically accept any responsibility at all. On a very fundamental level, I just don’t believe that he cares about most Americans.

He may be a nice man in person, although I sort of doubt it, but the President of the United States of America just has to have more to offer than hiding the truth from its citizens while pursuing an agenda that was too far right for most of the right wing until recently. We are not an empire, and our citizens have rights.

For me, the issues are too big and too lethal to us to ignore them.

People can transform themselves – they can listen, they can grow. With this president, that’s all I have left to hope for, that he will think about that promise of compassionate conservatism. His record is neither.

I have to ask: even if the President hadn’t reduced funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, how could the flooding have been stopped, or even slowed significantly? There was never a plan on the books to strengthen the levees to the point that they could have withstood a category 5 hurricane.

I’d say that Bush didn’t “gut” FEMA, but rather folded in some of the more redundant functions into Homeland Security. And if having been Deputy Director of FEMA for some time didn’t make Michael Brown qualified to run it, who would have been a better choice?

Was asking the Governor of LA before the storm hit to evacuate the state not taking the problem seriously enough? What else could he have done that would have maintained the legal process of authority AND proved to enough people that he felt compassion for the potential victims?

Would you have supported him more if he admitted more mistakes? The last President to have publicly admitted error was JFK, and he did so because we got within a hairsbreadth of nuclear (nucular) war with the Soviets over the Bay of Pigs. What’s an acceptable level of responsibility to take?