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Monday, September 5, 2024
On Criticizing the Response to Katrina
By Dr. Steven Taylor @ 11:00 am

(I am supposed to be working on my book on Colombian politics, but the following is bouncing around in my head and I very much need to divest my brain of these words so that I can concentrate, so here we go).

There is a reason that I used to use the tagline “A Rough Draft of my Thoughts� here at PoliBlog (indeed, I have been intending to re-integrate it in some way, but have yet to do so) and that is because this is exactly how I view a lot of what I do here on the blog. I am often thinking out loud in public, a dangerous endeavor at times, as it means that malformed or incomplete ideas and conclusions find their way out into the public square of ideas on a frequent basis.

I especially feel this way in looking at the response to Katrina. I initially wanted to avoid too much in the way of critiquing, although I suppose it is inevitable that criticisms would immediately emerge. I have been prepared to give all involved the benefit of the doubt, and even still do although I have some key questions.

Many have called for not criticizing at all, so that all our energies can be focused on relief and recovery. This is a valid position, although one that is rather difficult to maintain. Further, sometime public criticism can contribute to the relief effort, but drawing direct attention to ongoing problems.

I think that part of my own need to discuss the issues of error or failure on the part of public officials is that it has been become (indeed, has been almost from the beginning) the clear subtext of the coverage of these events. Since one of the things I use this blog for is to give air to my responses to mass media coverage (blogging is far more satisfying than simply talking back to the tv), it is no surprise (to me, at least) that I have been giving a lot of thought and therefore a lot of words to this topic.

I do not want to be engaged in a partisan debate. At this point in time, the partisan identifiers that go after the names of the Mayor of New Orleans, the Governor of Louisiana or the President of the United States are irrelevant to me. (Sadly, I don’t think that they are irrelevant to all involved in numerous critiques).

I have focused much of my criticism to this point on local authorities, because I think that they had an increased level of responsibility for the foreseeable failures. (Although my first critical post was aimed generically, and I noted grave concerns about FEMA this morning). The reason I have approached the topic along these lines is explained by some comments I made yesterday to this post as Ladera Frutal:

I wonder if in the overall picture there aren’t some ideological/philosophical forces at play here (beyond just partisan ones). Speaking for myself as someone with conservative/libertarian leanings vis-a-vis government, I am ultimately a skeptic in regards to the ability of government to achieve complex goals. Not a total skeptic, but a skeptic nonetheless. And the New Orleans situation was singularly complex, if not unprecedented.

I also am a strong advocate of federalism, and it seems to me that the first responders and the command and control for this type of event is ultimately in the hands of state and local officials. (And not just an advocate of the concept, but honestly understand it to work that way).
As such, it is less that I am predisposed to judge Bush less harshly on partisan grounds (and, as noted, I have not fully formed an opinion on his performance) but it is that I have finite confidence in the power of the government in the first place, and it is my understanding of the policy-implementation situation in a case like this that the locals bear the primary responsibility for most (but not all) of the failures we have seen.

I would like to think that partisan labels aren’t at issue in my thinking, but I may be mistaken. No doubt the discussion will continue…

And this comment to the same post:

My critique to this point is about change of policy responsibility and how that aligns with the federal nature of our system.

I have no problem saying that one could contrive a federal system in which all issues of natural disaster are the domain of the central government–but to this point that isn’t really what we have done in the US.

Such comments, by the way, should not be construed to forgive and errors made by the feds in this affair.

At any rate, I want to make it clear that my analysis of this event is ongoing and evolving, as I think any honest evaluation of an ongoing event has to be.

I do think that one’s philosophical perspective does matter in understanding one’s evaluation. I think that a lot of the criticisms in the press are predicated on the belief that government, and the central government of the US in particular, is more powerful than it actually is. I also think that much of that analysis is colored by a view of federalism that diminishes the importance of state and local government within its own thinking.

I will note this in no uncertain terms: no one should be defending or attacking a particular politician or government based on one’s partisan “team.� While I wholly believe that citizens (and denizens of the Blogosphere perhaps more than some) treat the political like a sporting event, I would underscore that the Aftermath of Katrina is as far from a football game as we can get.

Filed under: Hurricanes | |Send TrackBack

Random Fate linked with A post delayed

11 Comments »

  • el
  • pt
    1. I’ve made comments re: the news coverage of this thing at my blog. What continues to confound and anger me is the ongoing sanctification of Dubya. And they said Reagan was Teflon. When will the print and electronic media finally come out and challenge this administration? So much for the myth of the “liberal press”.

      Comment by Howard Beale — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:15 am

    2. “Confound, anger, sanctification, challenge,” Howard, are we commenting on the same posting?

      Steven, your posting clarified many questions about your thinking that had given me pause.

      R/

      Comment by Henriet Cousin\' — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:31 am

    3. HC:

      Good–that was part of my goal. (and thanks for the noting that)

      S

      Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:35 am

    4. Many questions about the response but your basic point about Federalism is probably the main issue. It seems like many people want the Feds to take over when there is a crisis. This is what happened to the airline screeners and that has not been a success. I knew that based on what I saw in Livingston Alabama that First Responders had a great problem getting to the people who needed help and it was only a matter of time. People who live through what happened in N.O. do not want to hear that it was only a matter of time before the Feds and the Military took over and it would happen methodically. I hate that there is blame but the blame will never stop the fact that if we have a category 5 hurricane, a hugh bomb go off, or some other great problem that we will have trouble initially and then slowly we will get better.

      Comment by Mark — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 3:26 pm

    5. Terrific post, Steven, and I think some additional comments that you and I each posted over at Fruits and Votes (in the entry linked above) also address the question of how to think about federal responsibilities, whether the analogy of “attack by nature” and “attack by foreign invaders” is a valid one, etc.

      This is a debate that should go on, and not get lost in either partisan posturing or blaming of specific individuals. As I have said before, the issues this raises really are matters of institutional design.

      And it is not as though the choices behind the current institutional arrangement for disaster relief were made by one party or one politician. They were very much bipartisan.

      (By the way, I find I am using my blog exactly as you mention in the first few paragraphs!)

      Comment by Matthew — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 4:28 pm

    6. A post delayed

      Tonight (my time), I had planned to elaborate on a theme I have introduced in the past few days, that of who is responsible for setting priorities of our government, and who can make changes.
      If you haven’t been reading, the answer to the quest…

      Trackback by Random Fate — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 5:03 pm

    7. hat continues to confound and anger me is the ongoing sanctification of Dubya. And they said Reagan was Teflon. When will the print and electronic media finally come out and challenge this administration? So much for the myth of the “liberal press�.

      This is insane. Every report I read in the press questions the federal response. The frame of the story is “ongoing criticism of the federal response.” Not ongoing criticism of *all* response, but specifically *federal* response. Probably half of the questions I’ve heard at various press conferences and interviews have been of the “why weren’t you here sooner” variety (especially the “was it because Bush cut your budget?” variety).

      To suggest that the press has been lionizing Bush in this affair is laughable, bordering on psychosis.

      Re: Steve’s analysis - I have noted several times on my blog that the people who are criticizing the federal response right now are doing so from an incredibly short-sighted, immediate lens that doesn’t have all the information needed to truly judge the performance.

      Rather, there is this need to demand an immediate response from all sides of the political spectrum. And the immediate presence of media with cameras exacerbated that need. The cameras fed the frustration as Shepard Smith and everyone else pleaded with rescuers to come save people (all the while the camera crews never seemed to run out of food or water).

      There’s an interesting paper in this all about media, politics and national disasters.

      Comment by Bryan S. — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 7:52 pm

    8. The Bush gang is busy putting their spin on this debacle why else would Rumsfeld and Rice be on the scene. The press has not be hard enough on Bush or the mayor of New Orleans. The press needs to review why Brown is in the position of running FEMA, why is FEMA no longer a cabinet position. Instead, we see the Bush gang jockeying for photo ops. Let’s not forget that the Chief Justice’s body is barely cold and Bush has named Roberts to succeed — why? to try and change the news coverage.

      Comment by The Misanthrope — Monday, September 5, 2024 @ 11:17 pm

    9. There is nothing wrong with critiquing. You MUST critique in order to make lemonade out of a lemon. How else will you find answers on how to avoid such a tragic cost of human lives and valuables?

      BUT; critiquing can be a positive, while finger pointing is always negative. There IS a difference, you know.

      I guess I’m saying that finger pointing will get us NOWWHERE, while critiquing is a necessity… IF we’ll be avoiding the paying of such a high cost the next time… and there WILL BE a “next time”, unfortunately. That, we can count on.

      Comment by Gun-Toting Liberal — Tuesday, September 6, 2024 @ 1:22 am

    10. Gun-Toting Liberal,

      Agreed. However, much of what i have seen has been finger-pointing, and it has been quite partisan.

      Misanthrope:

      I agree that Rummy and Rice are there for PR. I also agree that Brown will likely in the press, and perhaps rightly so. The FEMA director is never a cabinet level position (I don’t think), and I am not sure what difference that would’ve made.

      I think you are being too cynical on the CJ move–given that the Roberts hearings were set to start this week, if Bush wanted to make him CJ, he had to do it now–plus the SC opens in a month. And Bush could have names Ronald McDonald to the slot, and that wouldn’t have taken Katrina off the focus. Although the CJ’s death did garner press attention, as it should, even before Bush named Roberts.

      Indeed, if the goal was to divert press attention, it would have been smarter to name someone else. Naming Roberts, given he has already been in thhe press for over a month, means less media buzz, not more.

      Comment by Dr. Steven Taylor — Tuesday, September 6, 2024 @ 7:03 am

    11. Regarding Brown, the left was demanding that he be sent in place of Jeb to the tsunami stricken areas earlier this year because supposedly he was the one who did a good job during Florida’s hurricane season last year. Now they want his head. All of it is partisan hackery.

      As for Roberts as the CJ, I was expecting that Bush would name him as his nominee, and do so in a hurry to get him confirmed before the next SC session starts. Roberts seems like the best CJ candidate available.

      Comment by ATM — Wednesday, September 7, 2024 @ 5:10 am

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