by Christopher T. Gates, September 9, 2005
(A shorter version of this essay was printed in the Rocky Mountain News on 9/13/05.)
Some members of the media and some politicians appear to be consumed with the task of deciding who is 'to blame' for the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all while the dead have yet to be recovered, identified or buried. The 'blame game' being currently played is only in the first quarter, there is a long way to go. We have months and months of mindless talk radio chatter and shrill cable news network blather about who is more, or less, to blame for the events of the past week. I watched in amazement as a talking head on MSNBC berated guest after guest, demanding to know 'who is to be blamed?!' It almost seemed personal to her as she sat in her New York City studio...she personally wanted to know. And in some ways she probably spoke for many if not most citizens of this nation. We all knew this could happen and wondered why it had become such a national nightmare. We watched the weather reports, saw the satellite photos, looked at the computer simulations, heard the dire predictions, possibly scoffed at the more extreme estimates about the damage that might be caused by a Category 5 hurricane, but were then shocked by what we saw reported on our televisions when the hurricane hit with a vengeance and the victims didn't get the support and assistance they needed. It seemed that America had abandoned or forgotten an entire swath of our nation, an area that President Bush oddly kept referring to as 'a region of the world'.
My guess is that former President Bill Clinton will be proved quite right. After this initial round of partisan bickering, we will eventually form an independent Katrina Commission that will ask the hard questions, examine the emails and internal memos, and then ultimately dole out 'blame' by the bucketful. The Bush Administration will be blamed for underfunding recommended levee repairs. Bush himself will be blamed for using FEMA as a dumping ground for political appointees. FEMA will be blamed for being blase and bureaucratic about a very urgent human crisis. The State of Louisiana will be blamed for not being more forceful in their communications with the feds. The City of New Orleans will be blamed for not being more aggressive about the evacuation of the city. The list will go on and on and on, and there won't be anyone associated with the sad events of the past week who won't be stained by the splash of sorrow and anger and resentment and rage.
But what is also clear, and what has been implied if not described in the news coverage, is that there has been an incredible lack of strong and confident public sector leadership since Katrina made land this past Monday. And here the assessment is non-partisan and across the board, despite the desire of partisans on both sides of the aisle to assess blame in a way that will shape the 2006 mid-term elections.
The President clearly initially avoided setting foot in New Orleans, apparently for fear of being either confronted or assaulted. Dennis Hastert Speaker of the US House of Representatives suggested that it wouldn't make sense to rebuild New Orleans. Michael Brown, the now disgraced former head of FEMA, told a reporter from CNN that he had no idea that there were people in the New Orleans Convention Center, let alone any knowledge that young women were being raped and that the elderly were dying in their chairs (a sound bite that had to be heard to be believed). Michael Chertoff, his boss at the Department of Homeland Security, told Tim Russert on Meet The Press that he could only presume that Brown 'didn't have a lot of time to watch television,' which apparently explained why the head of FEMA was unaware of a basic fact that has been reported on every major news network for 48 hours.
And state and local officials were not immune from the Katrina leadership outage either. Governor Kathleen Blanco seemed by absolutely all accounts to be unnerved and uncertain at every turn. When asked what her plans for recovery were, she asked all who were listening to her to join her in prayer. The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, while understandably frustrated with the slow pace of assistance coming his way, melted down on live talk radio and filled the airwaves with profanities and expletives about the federal government. Aaron Broussard, the President of the Jefferson Parrish disintegrated into tears and sobs on live national television while trying to explain why he was frustrated with the federal response. The New Orleans Police Chief even suggested that as a result of the trauma of the previous week that taxpayers should pay for week-long vacations in Las Vegas and Atlanta for all New Orleans policemen and women, because of the difficult time they had experienced. (This suggestion by the way, was scoffed at by many of those who remained on the New Orleans force.) No one can begrudge these officials their emotions and frustrations with how the first week of this natural and human disaster played out, but we can ask if they were doing their jobs by providing effective leadership during this crisis.
What binds all of those vignettes together is a lack of strong public sector leadership. There was not an assuring, confident, powerful voice amongst them. At a time when the people of the region needed to hear someone tell them that there was a plan, that there was resolve, and that in America this challenge was one that would be met, they were instead inundated with government officials who reflected the anguish of their people but did not bear the burden of leadership. There was no shortage of appropriate outrage, but there was no one who said, 'we will fix this.' There was no one who said, 'we will not let this defeat us.' There was no one who was willing to both wade in the water and offer hope. During the first several days after the hurricane hit, there was no sound bite, no film clip that would assure the residents of the region and the citizens of this country that strong people were in charge, that they had resolve for the future and that those who had responsibility and resources would make this all better.
As we mark the four year anniversary of the tragic events of September 2001, it is impossible not to compare this moment to those days, the last national crisis our nation faced. When compared to the responses to 9-11, the lack of public leadership in the last week is especially jarring. Where was the same George Bush that walked into the rubble of the Towers and spoke to the relief workers over a bullhorn? Where was Mayor Guliani who walked up Broadway with the New York City Police and Firemen behind him? Where were the strong and proud pronouncements from leaders of government at every level that we would come together and we would not let this break us? The responses to these two disasters could not have been more different. While President Bush might have tried to reprise his 9-11 role as the leader in charge in the last several days, he was still days late, his compassion seemed manufactured and insincere, and he never made it to ground zero.
And could anyone have imagined Mayor Guliani explaining that New York City Policemen had suffered severe trauma and so they were being sent to Las Vegas for a five day taxpayer funded vacations? No, of course not. Instead there were literally skirmishes at the edges of the recovery site at the World Trade Center between policemen, fireman and other emergency workers. Despite the structural uncertainty of the ruins that teetered above them, New York City Firefighters and Policemen literally fought over the right to dig in the rubble with their bare hands for human remains.
Think back four years ago when our nation's largest city was briefly brought to it's knees; our nation came together. That event made us stronger and more united. The response to this latest disaster has been nearly the opposite. It has torn us apart and shown us to be weak and uncertain. The question we need to ask is, why?
Are we a more divided nation today than we were four years ago? Is our reaction different because one was an attack on our nation by those who hate us, as opposed to the random path of a hurricane? Is it because New York City is known for the 'high-culture' of theater and the arts, and New Orleans is know for the 'low-culture' of the French Quarter and Mardis Gras? Is it because New York is the home of world trade and commerce and New Orleans is the home of some of the worst examples of poverty that exist in the United States today? Is it because New York City is known as an affluent anglo city with sleek, modern development and New Orleans is known as a poor black city, celebrated, in a now perverse way, for it's ramshackle nature? Is it because so many victims of 9-11 were policemen, fireman and other emergency personnel, and the victims of Katrina were largely the poor, the elderly and disabled, those who were simply unable to flee?
For whatever reason, for whatever combination of the factors listed above, and the other hundred reasons have been debated on talk radio and cable television over the past week, the response of our leaders and our nation to these two crises has been markedly different. It is not worth debating which crisis was worse, the natural disaster that was Hurricane Katrina or the terrorist nightmare that was the World Trade Center. But is it worth pondering why the reactions of our government leaders were so different and why as citizens of this nation our gut feels so different today. In the days after 9-11 we were filled with national pride and a resolve that we would never let the terrorists defeat us. And in the days after Katrina, we can only debate who is to blame and whether the soup bowl that is New Orleans is worth refilling with life, or with water.
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Chris Gates is President of the National Civic League, founder of the Colorado Institute for Leadership Training, and the former Chair of the Colorado Democratic Party.
