Fiat Lux

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

And before joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a deputy director in 2001, GOP activist Mike Brown had no significant experience that would have qualified him for the position.

The Oklahoman got the job through an old college friend who at the time was heading up FEMA.

Source: the Boston Herald. I’m sitting here shaking my head. That’s just … wow. I mean, WOW. Exactly how is this man even remotely qualified to run FEMA?

It gets better.

Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders’ and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

“We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,” explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner’s office. “This was his full-time job . . . for 11 years,” she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

Now, the calibre of the political appointees to a government agency do not necessarily reflect on the calibre of the agency’s staff, but it does have an impact in terms of the ability to keep key members of that staff, as well as in policies, priorities, and planning. We’re seeing that impact played out in excruciating detail this week on the Gulf Coast.

This guy need to be fired.

There’s a lot being said in the blogosphere right now. There’s a lot of anger, frustration, grief, and pain. But Ezra wrote something this morning that I particularly like. I’m quoting the majority of it here:

George W. Bush is not up to the task of leadership. That’s not said as a criticism, actually — I am not up to the task of dancing, or running marathons. We all have failings, and Bush’s essential flaw is an inability to project himself, an inability to grow in dimension during a crisis, an inability to sense that catastrophes serve as opportunities for strengthening the American community. I dislike Bush for mean-spiritedness, for his incompetence, for his smugness. But I deplore him for his smallness. That the 2004 election was a 51-49 affair is shocking. Had John McCain won in 2000, his response to 9/11 would have toasted the Democratic party for the next 20 years. Had Al Gore been in office, his leadership in the moments after would’ve changed the world, or at least the international community. Both of them would have brought Americans together. But Bush simply invited us to malls, wedged us apart, snookered us into a disastrous war that didn’t need to be fought. For a President to hold office during a crisis of that magnitude and do as little, both socially and politically, as Bush did is almost unprecedented.

I don’t blame Bush for Katrina — he does not control the weather. And I don’t blame him for the levees — even with full-funding, they weren’t scheduled to be completed for years, the levee that broke was actually one of the renovated ones, and so on; his funding decisions were criminal, but they would only have been causal five years from now. I blame him for the national guard being absent, but that’s a secondary problem. What I blame him for, what I hate him for, is for not stepping up to the job of President right now. For being a small man when a big one is required. For offering a laundry list of supplies-on-the-way when his job is uniting the American people and helping them give aid and comfort to their countrymen. A President can’t stop a disaster, but he can coalesce the citizenry to ease its aftermath, he can take catastrophe and use it to reknit the nation’s community.

Bush didn’t. He didn’t do it here and he didn’t do it on 9/11. In America, great things can come out of great calamity. Bush has had two opportunities to create something lasting, he has failed both times. For most else, I forgive him. For that, I never will.