Update: Someone takes some responsibility! (read below).
Over the past few days I have found it very difficult to actually write anything for this site. This usually happens when I get too frustrated about something that totally distracts me.
We have been given the unfortunate opportunity this past week to see that POLITICS holds more weight in this society than the welfare of our fellow man. While bodies floated in the polluted waters that flooded New Orleans, many Democrats, Republicans rushed to their ideological corners of the political spectrum to “ready the arrows of accusation” to shoot them at key individuals based on their political stripe. It almost reminded me of one big paint ball game between the red team and the blue team.
I was raised up in a home where the one thing that was expected of me was to own up to my mistakes. Lying or making excuses was simply not accepted. Either I told the truth and owned up to my responsibility or paid the consequences. Today, I expect my kids to operate the same way. Unfortunately, my kids have this principal down a lot better than many of the politicians surrounding the Katrina aftermath. Nobody wants to admit any wrongdoing on their behalf, but everyone is willing to toss the criticism on someone else (if I hear one more time someone make the statement “I do not want to point any fingers ’cause its too early, but…”). I dunno, I guess I’m just one of those people that define a leader as someone who owns up to their responsibility regardless of the consequences. This is something that is dramatized in movies, but so few people are willing to take it on the chin.
Over the past week I have watched both Democrats and Republicans skip around tough questions from the media regarding flawed handling of the Katrina aftermath. On one hand Bush tells Michael Brown “…you’re doing a heck of a job”. The next week, under heavy criticism by both Democrats and Republicans, Brown is sent packing back to D.C. where he later “resigns” from his head post as FEMA director. Nobody in the Bush administration stands up to admit that Brown was in over his head from the beginning of this whole thing. Once again government makes a costly mistake, and once again it gets explained away. [Note: As I mentioned the other day, FEMA has a long history of late arrivals to natural disasters. The American people deserve a full explanation regarding this and so far we have not received it].
On the other hand you have Democrats who “circle the wagons” around both Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin dispite their gross negligence for not following through on their own policies.
When all of this went down in New Orleans, the first questions that came to mind were: “How many people were hurt?” The other question popped up once I saw along with the rest of America that help was being delayed was “Who screwed up?” As a former manager in two IT departments for two major companies along with my experience as an entrepreneur, trying to figure out the political leanings of state and local officials would have been absurd. My years of training and experience simply tells me to seek out the “dead wood” and get rid of it. Although I realized that Nagin was under extreme circumstances, I also realized that he was the elected official in that city and he obviously screwed up to some degree (based on their own hurricane evacuation plan).
I expressed my “two cents” on Nagin online recently and was met with the assumption that my comments were simply based on the fact that he was a Democrat. Although I was very pissed off at this assumption , I also realized that we are living in a day that ANY intellectual discussion is watered down to a Democratic vs. Republican debate (even though I am not registered as either). I mentioned in my comments that while the finger pointing was heating up, I hoped that ALL involved parties would take the appropriate criticisms including Nagin.
Why are you singling out the brotha?
If Nagin was a white Republican with ties to either Bush and/or Haliburton, he would already have been labeled a racist a long time ago. Many in the black community would have been more than eager to point out that while blacks suffered in the streets, he and his white staff (if he and his staff were white) was nice and safe in one of the nicest hotels in town. I know of several people that would have been quick to ask the question “So is this what you call ‘compassionate’ conservatism?”
But because Nagin is a Democrat and black(In that order—He used to be a Republican until he realized he would loose his bid for mayor if he did not switch parties), many in the black community have been somewhat mum on his shortcomings during the Katrina aftermath pushing the brunt of the blame on Bush without being able to accurately articulate that assumption.
Just as many in the black community want to see white non-Democratic politicians own up to there responsibilities as elected officials, we should demand no less from those who align with our political leanings.
To his credit, Nagin has made a considerable effort to rid his city of the corruption that has plagued it for years. But this does not eliminate the fact that more could have been done under his immediate authority to evacuate more people from the city as well as to provide food and water for those who opted to stay in the Superdome. To gloss over this fact simply because of his political pursuesion (or to some, the color of his skin) is totally ridiculous.
Unfortunately Nagin is just one small part of a huge machine called government that failed to make the necessary changes to the levee system for decades. The politicians of yesteryear had the convenience and luxury to “pass the buck” to the next administrations. The “ball” of responsibility has fallen into the hands of Nagin, Blanco, Bush and all agencies in between. WE THE PEOPLE cannot allow them to pass the responsibility to another future administration if we truly wish to prevent something like this from happening again.
Update:Bush on Katrina response: ‘I take responsibility’ (Reuters)
President George W. Bush took responsibility on Tuesday for any failures in the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina that struck two weeks ago and acknowledged the storm exposed deficiencies at all levels of government four years after the Sept. 11 attacks. (more…)
