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Sun Sep 18 15:54:05 PDT 2005

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The Shaming of America

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THE SHAMING OF AMERICA
Sep 8th 2005  

Hurricane Katrina has exposed both personal and structural weaknesses
in America's government

EVEN America's many enemies around the world tend to accord it respect.
It might be arrogant, overbearing and insensitive--but, by God, it can
get things done. 

Since Hurricane Katrina, the world's view of America has changed. The
disaster has exposed some shocking truths about the place: the
bitterness of its sharp racial divide, the abandonment of the
dispossessed, the weakness of critical infrastructure. But the most
astonishing and most shaming revelation has been of its government's
failure to bring succour to its people at their time of greatest need. 

The finger-pointing is already under way, with the federal government
blaming local government and local government blaming the feds. But if
America is to avoid future catastrophes it needs to do more than
bicker. It needs to learn the right lessons from this fortnight's
debacle.

BLAME FOR THE SHAME
Natural disasters on this scale inevitably bring chaos and suffering.
Katrina wreaked havoc over an area the size of Britain. And even the
best-laid hurricane plans cannot deal with the quirks of human nature.
People who live in areas prone to hurricanes tend to become blase about
storm warnings. This insouciance is native to New Orleans, where a
lethal local cocktail is called The Hurricane. But none of that excuses
government's failure.

Local government must shoulder some of the blame. The authorities in
Louisiana have a reputation for confusion, inefficiency and worse.
Different authorities are responsible for different levees, for
example, and several close associates of the former mayor were recently
indicted for corruption. Local incompetence exacerbated the disaster:
in Orleans Parish, for instance, where 60,000 households do not own a
car, hundreds of city buses which might have shipped out stranded
people were left to be swamped by the rising waters. 

Still, Washington is mostly at fault. The responsibility for mobilising
the response to a disaster lies squarely with the federal government.
And the responsibility for galvanising the federal government lies
squarely with the president. 

The administration's initial response recalled Donald Rumsfeld's
reaction to the anarchy in Iraq: stuff happens. George Bush was
listless and confused. Dick Cheney, the vice-president, remained on
holiday in Wyoming. Condoleezza Rice, the highest ranking black in the
country, saw a Broadway show, "Spamalot", while New Orleans's poor
looked out at the floodwaters. Mr Bush then added disingenuity to
leaden-footedness, declaring that nobody had anticipated the breaching
of the levees--even though people have been worrying about the
possibility for years and an official report published in 2001 warned
of impending disaster. 

Mr Bush's personal weakness is shaming; but the structural failures in
government that Katrina has revealed are perhaps more worrying. After
September 11th Mr Bush poured billions into creating the Department of
Homeland Security, but the department has flunked its first big test.
It is a bureaucratic monstrosity that includes organisations as
different as the Coast Guard and the immigration authorities and spends
most of its energies in perpetual reorganisation. The department's
focus on fighting terrorism has also distracted attention from coping
with natural disasters, reducing the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) from a cabinet-level agency into a neglected stepchild.
The best illustration of this is its boss: Michael Brown spent nine
years at the Arabian Horse Association, before finally being eased out
and joining FEMA as general counsel, brought in by its previous head,
his college room-mate. 

The second structural problem is Washington's addiction to pork-barrel
spending. The anti-war left is keen to blame the Iraq war for depleting
government's resources. The real problem, however, is not a lack of
resources--Mr Bush has increased discretionary spending faster than any
president since Lyndon Johnson--but the way they are allocated. The
funding for New Orleans's levees, which has fallen by nearly half over
the past four years, started dropping in 2001--before the Iraq war, but
after Bob Livingston, a Louisiana congressman and erstwhile chairman of
the House Appropriations Committee, left politics under a cloud. The
recent transport bill contains some $24 billion-worth of pure
pork--including $231m for a "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. Although
this sort of thing is endemic in Washington, it has got far worse since
the Republicans took over both the White House and Congress. 

OUT OF THE DEPTHS
The polls suggest that the majority of people don't hold Mr Bush
personally responsible for the bungling. Things are slowly improving on
the ground. The federal government is pouring resources into the
region, and ordinary Americans are opening their wallets to charities
and their homes to refugees. But if Mr Bush is to rise to this occasion
he needs to do more than take charge. He needs to make sure that
America is better prepared for future calamities. This means rejigging
his second-term agenda: downplaying favourite issues like Social
Security reform and fixing the flaws in America's government that
Katrina has exposed. 

The most urgent task is to address the mess that is the Department of
Homeland Security. He should upgrade FEMA and re-examine the wisdom of
bundling disaster relief with terrorism prevention. He needs to
confront the corrupt legislative culture in Washington: the job of the
president is to look to the national interest rather than to reward his
friends. If he managed to persuade Congress to regurgitate the pork in
the transport bill, that would go a long way towards paying for
rebuilding the levees. And he needs to start wielding his red pencil
and exercising his right to veto bad legislation. 

If Mr Bush addresses America's failings with the same vigour that he
addressed Islamic terrorism in the wake of September 11th, he has a
chance of reinvigorating his presidency and restoring respect in his
country; if he doesn't, he will go the way of his father, limping
wounded into retirement.

See this article with graphics and related items at http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory.cfm?Story_ID=4370617

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