George's Excellent Colorado Adventure

George Bush enjoyed his Hurricane Rita fact-finding mission to the United States Northern Command headquarters in Colorado Springs so much, that he came home and decided to ask Congress to give the military the lead responsibility for dealing with all natural disasters.   These are the same forces that stayed on the sideline when Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans, rudely interrupting the President's vacation and the Secretary of State's shopping trip to New York.

But the "fact-finder in Chief" has failed to explain why the entire system needs to be changed when the response to Rita, with civilian authorities in charge, worked so well. 

The real explanation is clear -- during Rita, the federal government was not asleep at the wheel and federal civilian and military assets were effectively deployed to evacuate at-risk populations.  During Katrina, the federal government did little or nothing to aid the overwhelmed state and local officials prior to the storm, trapping 100,000 mostly poor and incapacitated people in a disaster zone.   Military assets were on the street two days before Rita, but not for three days after Katrina.

For the President, every problem seems to have a reorganizational answer.   There is no substitute, however, for effective leadership.