Bring Me the Head of Michael Brown!

Andrew Sullivan has called on bloggers to try to bring about the resignation or firing of Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, and so I am here to do my part. In my previous post, I said that we should wait until the crisis passed to start pointing fingers, but the more I read, and the more I think about it, people need to be fired now, if only to reassure the public that the administration is aware of just how colossal of a failure this is. I say "people need to be fired," because I'm seeing Sullivan and raising him one - Michael Chertoff ought to go to. True, the mess at DHS isn't entirely his fault, but he's the leader and so he has to go. And, after further investigation, I'm sure there are a number of mid-level people at FEMA and DHS who ought to be removed as well.

In addition, I think that George Bush owes the people of Louisiana and Mississippi (and indeed all of the American people) an apology for the poor showing of the government. Why? Because he's the President, and so the buck stops with him. He's the one who appointed Brown and Chertoff. He's the one who presided over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. So it's his job to find out what went wrong, to fix it, and to hold those responsible accountable for their failures.

Now, some people might object that this is all just partisan politics at it's worst, capitalizing on a national tragedy. No, defending the administration at this point is the partisan thing to do. Calling for the resignation of incompentent bureaucrats is simply demanding accountability from government - the only way we can possibility expect things to be better next time. We have to change the institutional culture at FEMA, and we need to do it immediately.

Finally, please check out Andrew Sullivan, John Marshall, Slate, Constructive Interference, CNN, and any number of other websites that are doing an excellent job covering this crisis.