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Former FEMA head Brown stands for everything wrong in politics
I’m usually not one to delve into the realm of politics, but Michael Brown appears to be so clueless that it’s difficult to not want to rant and rave about the guy.
It drives me nuts when people just try to pass the blame from person to person in an effort to save their own hide. If you’re responsible, step up and say so. If you’re partly responsible, admit to your mistakes, and try to find out where things went wrong so it doesn’t happen again.
Michael Brown did neither. He just sat there, patted himself on the back, and blamed everyone else for what went wrong.
“My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday [August 27] that Louisiana was dysfunctional,” — Michael Brown (via CNN)
Of course, Louisiana government blames the national government. If you hear only what people had to say about their own group, the Louisiana situation wasn’t handled that badly. But at least Mayor Nagin admits to local shortcomings:
“The federal government, state government and local government did not have the processes, in my opinion, to deal with a storm of this magnitude,” Nagin said.
People are trying to save face now, rather than face up to their mistakes. Katrina was a disaster and Katrina’s relief was a disaster.
Everyone always has someone else to blame — be it in politics or in general. Politics seems to have the highest concentration of blame-passers; I’m guessing it’s because the only way to get to be a newsworthy politician is to have passed enough blame that people will think you had a good enough record to vote for.
“I am happy to be a scapegoat,” Brown said. “I am happy to take whatever barbs that Mr. Taylor or anybody else wishes to throw at me if it means that the FEMA that I knew when I came here is going to be able to be reborn.”
If you’re sitting there saying you’re a scapegoat in front of the world, guess what? You don’t actually believe you did anything wrong. You believe you did everything right, and are getting blamed for everything anyway. Way to take the high road, Brown.
I usually find Congressional hearings to be a joke, and a chance for Congressmen to get some good PR while not actually getting anything done (note the baseball steroid hearings), but Christopher Shays got in a good line:
“”That’s why I’m happy you left,” Shays said, “because that kind of, you know, look in the lights like a deer, tells me that you weren’t capable to do the job.”
Look at that. For once, I agree with a politician.
Wed September 28th, 2005 5:33 pm
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Judge Roberts got appointed today. If you want to be pissed about something in politics, be pissed that the Democrats are already threatening a filibuster WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING WHO THE NEXT NOMINEE IS.
That makes tons of sense.
The next nominee is questionable, even now that I know who she is.
Anyway. I’m not going to get into it on Brown, but I am going to say that I’m disgusted about the steroid hearings. Since when does Congress need to have a hearing about whether some musclebound jocks stick needles in their arms? If we’re going to have Congress meet over needles-in-arms, let’s get back to the “say no to drugs” campaign, shall we?
Oh, that’s right, I forgot; we left the War on Drugs behind to work on the even more ephemeral War on Terror. Silly me.
So is Raphael Palmiero a terrorist now? Nah, probably not, but maybe that fellow who gave him the were-they-really-steroids is. Let’s get ‘im!
Eric: The logic must be “if George Bush likes him/her, they must be the spawn of Satan. So let’s get our ducks in a row.”
Mallory: I don’t think anyone expected Congress to figure anything out with their hearings. I think it was a chance for them to get in front of the cameras and say “DRUGS ARE BAD MKAY!! DON’T DIRTY THE MINDS OF AMERICANS WITH YOUR DRUG USE MKAY!” That way, everyone will know they are drugs-bad-mkay and family values live on. Photo op.
Ugh. My favorite part of politics. The smile-at-the-camera-and-kiss-some-babies part.