Anybody who seeks to blame President Bush for the seemingly slow response to the disaster in New Orleans needs to consider a few basic civics lessons that the President is apparently too polite to point out.
The first, and most relevant, is noted by Hugh Hewitt (who teaches Con Law):
What is the "police power?"
Where does it reside?
Is there a federal "police power?"
Can the federal government order the evacuation of a city when state and local officials have not done so?
Who has first call on a state's national guard?
Who controls a city's police department?
Can a federal official order a police department to deploy in strength to specific points within a city such as the Supredome or the Convention Center?
Can a federal official commandeer a city's supply of school busses, city busses, and city personnel?
For starters, the police power resides in the states. There is no general federal police power.
This is the key lesson to understanding what happened, and is happening, in New Orleans. THERE IS NO GENERAL FEDERAL POLICE POWER. The President of the United States cannot take action to remedy a domestic crisis without local and state governments taking steps to request that help.
Indeed, many of the Founding Fathers had a great distrust of standing armies precisely because, they feared, a king-like executive could have the power to quell domestic resistance practically at will. The notion of a standing, federal army was thus extremely controversial at the founding of our country, and the structure of command and control of the army, with respect to domestic affairs, has been devolved to the States for that very reason.
And that is why local governments have the responsibility of being the first responders in the event of a disaster. The New Orleans city government didn't even have a plan for getting the poor out of the city. They were in the process of preparing a DVD telling people that they were on their own (and the city couldn't even be bothered to get that to people in time for hurricane season).
We don't have to bother with the governor, very much. Even Nagin is throwing her under the bus. (UPDATE: Now Blanco's office is hurling Nagin onto the train tracks. This might get ugly before it's all over. Via Captn Ed.)
It's also worth noting that, just because you see video of people in appalling conditions in New Orleans doesn't mean that preparations for relief are not being made elsewhere. And the logistics of moving large amounts of manpower and material into such a complete disaster zone are difficult, to say the least, especially considering that not even the city government had any kind of situational awareness as to what was happening at the Civic Center.
That kind of situation required not just supplies; it required an organized show of force. If the Guard had rushed in unprepared, without the proper logistical support, the press would be shouting "Quaqmire!" As LTG Honore (I hope he's a Republican) noted in a press conference (I don't have the link), the Guard has to have a staging area outside of the disaster zone before it can move. The problem with a hurricane is that you can't be quite sure as to just where the greatest need is going to arise until the hurricane has cleared out of the area. But in this case, the urgency of the situation in N.O. didn't arise until nearly 24 hours after the hurricane had passed.
The level of civic understanding of our nation's constitutional structure is appalling, especially among journalists who, one would think, ought to consider such understanding to be part of their civic duty to the public. The fact that the press has a conveniently short-term memory is hardly worthy of debate.
As an accompaniment to that point, the guys at Powerline give a good Fisking to Paul Krugman's latest lie-fest regarding the administration's alleged failure to effectively utilize Navy resources -- in particular, the USS Bataan.
The media's understanding of military matters is already, by now, notoriously bad. Not much need for discussion, there. But Jason Vansteenwyk continues to do yeoman's work. Hope springs eternal.
UPDATE: Steve H. sums it all up pretty well.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Anybody who thinks that the Secretary of State has anything at all to do with domestic disaster relief is just plain retarded.
ONE MORE UPDATE: This, on the other hand, looks pretty silly. (Via Instapundit).
When all is said and done, the feds will be shown to have saved New Orleans from its self-inflicted wounds.
I invite you to review:
Looking for holes in this thesis on the so-called lack of federal response in New Orleans
Posted by: Porkopolis | September 07, 2005 at 04:04 PM