Disaster Preparedness

When a disaster hits, it is too late to put your best people in charge of planning and preparation. That's not the place for soft political patronage.

Local officials should not delude themselves into thinking that existing plans for responding to dirty bombs can be simply expanded to deal with nuclear terrorism.

It is not enough to either sit by and hope that each president makes disaster-recovery a priority, or to spread urban legends designed to make FEMA as popular as Guantanamo Bay.

This was originally published as an exclusive commentary for Washington Monthly. Barack Obama must begin rebuilding federal agencies fast--or risk se...