When The Levee Broke

The First Renter and trusty companions were partying like it was 1999.

New Katrina E-Mails Show White House Chaos - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com: "Like President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and homeland-security adviser Frances Townsend, Card was on vacation when the hurricane struck. Back at the White House, the job of monitoring the storm was left to Kenneth Rapuano, Townsend's deputy. At 10 p.m., Rapuano left the White House to go home for the night, believing everything was under control.

It wasn't. Half an hour later, at 10:30 p.m., the Homeland Security Operations Center sent out a two-page bulletin reporting massive flooding and bodies floating in the water. Rapuano later told Congress that no one at the White House woke him to tell him about the report, and he didn't realize the extent of the damage until 6 the following morning, when another Homeland bulletin warned that 'it could take months to dewater' the city. Only then did it begin to dawn on top administration officials, including the president, how grave a human—and political—disaster they were facing."

Initiative is sorely lacking in this administration. Everyone waits for someone else to do something, therefore nothing gets done. Unless you count the many opportunites they have exploited to say that nobody could have foreseen...was there a Hale-Bopp exchange after all? I'm running out of explanations for the administration's disconnect and that sounded like as good an explanation as any at this point.

Four days after Katrina hit, on the evening of Thursday, Sept. 1, it was finally clear to everyone that things had gone horribly wrong. But Brown and other officials seemed mired in office politics.

Four days. Four days that the rest of the world watched a greater tragedy than 9/11 unfold. Four days before they got a clue.

I guess Florida is finally happy about those hanging chads now.

Tags: Katrina, White House Chaos, Bush, Vacation,