leftfielder.org

Leadership starts at the top. Perhaps no other bureaucracy in the world can match the United States Department of Defense. There are are extensive, clearly defined chains of command, and every member of that chain knows exactly who to take orders from, when, and how. And yet when wars go badly or when the tactical priorities fall out of line with the political objectives, no president in the history of this country has had any compunction about picking up the phone and demanding immediate change; even if it means redirecting individual planes. Its said that President Lyndon Johnson used to approve each and every bombing target during the Vietnam War. While this may have been a bit excessive, LBJ knew that ultimately the course of the war was his responsibility. A great leader fills important roles with good people and then trusts them to do their jobs. And if that trust is betrayed in a time of crisis, they take over personally until the situation is resolved. He knows that when their are conflicting messages and reports being sent by his subordinates that it is his job to step in and clear-up the situation.

President Bush failed as a leader before Katrina even hit. Michael Brown should never have been hired as FEMA director. Funding for FEMA and for the Army Corps of Engineers should have been taken more seriously. The National Guard should have been put on alert before the Hurricane hit. The President should have cut his vacation short and should have been prepared to call Congress back into session on a moments notice. The president should have made themselves fully aware of FEMA’s plans for a major hurricane hitting New Orleans before the hurricane made landfall. And if those plans didn’t exist, the President should have immediately convened some kind of advisory group of Emergency Management experts to predict and prepare for the worst.

Once the hurricane hit, and it became plainly obvious that no one was taking charge and organizing the federal response, or working to coordinate federal, state, and local responses, the President himself should have stepped into that role. One of FEMA’s jobs is to make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to disaster response; and if Michael Brown was not able to fill that role, then the President should have either done it himself or found someone else who would have.

Sadly, three weeks later, we still don’t have any coordination. The Mayor of New Orleans is still making plans and pronouncements that are being immediately contradicted by the National Guard, Coast Guard, and FEMA. Conflicting messages are still being sent to residents and evacuees. There are a lot of people in the Gulf Coast region doing the best that they can to help out, and they should all be commended. But five presidential visits and two national addresses later and the President has still not stepped up and taken responsibility for what’s happening. And I don’t mean issuing vague apologies for things that might have gone wrong. I mean rolling your sleeves up and wading into this whole mess with all of the power and authority that the President of the United States can marshal. The President wants to be a prophet, a visionary, he wants to give us a glimpse of a glorious future that we can build if we just do what he says. That’s perfectly fine for a president once the dust has settled. But right now we don’t need a visionary, we need a leader. We don’t need Samuel the priest and prophet; we need King David.

And now another hurricane approaches. So I wonder, will the President do for Texas what he has not done for Louisiana? Will he finally realize that we need more out of our president that stirring speeches and moving photo-ops? That we need a man who can take this country by the nose and make it do what is best? I hope so. But don’t bet on it.