Clift: A Colossal Failure of Leadership

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9174806/site/newsweek/

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.