Eleanor Clift has a great column in Newsweek called A Colossal Failure of Leadership. Clift lays it out point by point on how President Bush failed to do his job. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9174806/site/newsweek?rf=technorati
Here are some of her pieces of evidence:
'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.'
