The "resignation" of Mike Brown, director of FEMA, illustrates exactly why a presidential candidate should not simply run with a vice presidential candidate but with the top 20 - 50 people s/he'd appoint to top government positions.
Mr. Brown was formerly an estates and family lawyer -- not exactly where training in emergency preparedness occurs. He was asked to resign from his job as commissioner of judges for the International Arabian Horse Association for lawsuits filed because of lack of supervision failures.
Brown is now known for having "embellished" his resume and for having no (zip, nada, zero) experience in emergency management, as became readily apparent in his incredibly inept handling of the Gulf Coast disaster.
Why in the world appoint someone to such an important post who had no experience?
Well, political patronage is alive and well and living within the Beltway.
When the President appoints Cabinet secretaries, undersecretaries, agency heads et al, he is conveying to them the power for amazingly complex oversight of budgets and policies of amazingly complex -- and increasingly bureaucratic -- departments and organizations. When he appoints unqualified and sadly inept people -- and when the Senate confirms them -- we, as citizens who must live with their policies, spending habits, and poor decisions -- suffer.
One wonders how many other presidential appointees are in positions of power who have virtually no clue how to do the job they're in. One wonders how many other disastrous decisions -- or non-decisions -- will be made by these appointees. One wonders how much the country will suffer because of them.
One also wonders where the brains were of the senators who unanimously confirmed Brown as FEMA director in September 2002.
It should be obvious to all of us now that we cannot simply sit back after voting for a president, two senators, and some Congress people and assume they will do their job well keeping in mind the needs of the country and its citizens.
We need to take charge and help the government remember that it works for us. We need to know who the president will appoint to positions of power and we need the opportunity to learn about them, question them, and understand them before we elect the administration team.
No longer can we vote for "most charming" or "most likable." We must vote for a team -- a team that we know is qualified, does understand that their decisions will impact all of us and who will work for the good of all people.
As Paul Krugman said in yesterday's NYT:
The point is that Katrina should serve as a wakeup call, not just about FEMA, but about the executive branch as a whole. Everything I know suggests that it's in a sorry state -- that an administration which doesn't treat governing seriously has created two, three, many FEMA's [sic].
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Written in collaboration with Jennifer Hicks.
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