Now He Believes in Government

Elizabeth Bumiller in Saturday's NYT, in a backgrounder on Michael Brown's return to desk duty, elaborates on the "how could we have known?" defense currently being offered for the slow federal response. Here's a sample:

"The frustration throughout the week was getting good, reliable information," said the aide, who demanded anonymity so as not to be identified in disclosing inner workings of the White House. "Getting truth on the ground in New Orleans was very difficult."

True enough, as we've been attempting to document, but if you were sitting in the Oval, you might have had to resort to wwltv.com, or wdsu.com, if the White House had a broadcband connection, where people who knew the area were giving solid, real-time information and live, real-time chopper tours of the city's damaged areas. More?

One moment of realization occurred on Thursday of last week when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.

The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all.

So, when it counts most, screw the private sector and its newspapers and television outlets. Let's depend totally on the government information flow, even though we know it's managed by a former horse-show executive. A bizarre twist, but for those who recalll the President's proud statement early last year that he never reads the newspapers, it has the ring of truth.