From Investors Business Daily, no blame, just analysis of the impact of interlocking responsibilities, and where we really don't want to go with this.
Front-Line Feds
Disasters: Do Americans really want to push Washington deeper into the role of first responder? If that's so, they need to be more careful what they wish for.
If you want a hint of how Hurricane Katrina might change the federal government and everyone's relation to it, follow the pointing fingers. See who's getting the bulk of the blame.
Michael Brown, now relieved of his duties supervising FEMA's relief effort, has been the designated scapegoat role so far. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin haven't landed in the hot seat at least not yet for their egregious front-line failures.
Such selective outrage says a lot about the Democrat-media complex and its politics. But something deeper is also going on here. This focus on what the federal government did wrong, and what it may now be doing right, is in tune with a long-running trend that crosses party lines.
It used to be that the states, counties and cities had clear first-responder roles keeping or restoring order, evacuating people from harm's way and, before that, having credible emergency plans in place. But the old protocols are breaking down.
If we read the post-Katrina critics right, federal military and civilian agencies are now supposed to mobilize and get to the scene of a natural disaster as fast as the state and local authorities who were there all along.
This new standard for federal action has emerged over several decades in response to major disasters and shifts in public attitudes about the proper scope of national government.
FEMA, which Jimmy Carter cobbled together in 1979 to straighten out the tangle of federal disaster programs, has come to represent the disaster "cavalry" in the public mind the folks you can count on when the local authorities can't cut it.
The flip side of this confidence is complacency. It's only our guess at this point, but close scrutiny of the Katrina preparation and response may show the city of New Orleans and state of Louisiana did too little because they assumed that FEMA would do so much.
Calls for reform of America's disaster-response system are inevitable and proper after a tragedy on the scale of Katrina. But this is no time to act in haste or to just do more of the same and expand the federal role even further. Not only might this increase a false sense of security at the state and local levels, but it also would push federal agencies into work such as street-level law enforcement they are simply not meant to do.
Finally, there's the question of prerogatives. If we really want first-responder performance from Washington, it will need more power than it has now. Instead of waiting for a major catastrophe to order an evacuation, for instance, a truly front-line FEMA would be able to do the job itself, sending federal troops to drag people from their homes. Earlier, back at the preparedness phase, first-responder feds should also be able to decide who builds what and where in a flood-prone (or fire- or quake-prone) area.
We doubt if most Americans, much less state and local officials, would want Washington so directly running their lives. But if Washington is to be blamed for everything, then by rights it should be giving all the orders.
A much better course is to strengthen states and localities while demanding more of them. And the best way to do this may be to set clearer limits on what the federal government can and will do the next time disaster strikes.
