Emergency Response and Responsibility

Jack Welch:

. . . the Katrina crisis follows a well-worn pattern.

The first stage of that pattern is denial. The problem isn't that bad, the thinking usually goes, it can't be, because bad things don't happen here, to us. The second is containment. This is the stage where people, including perfectly capable leaders, try to make the problem disappear by giving it to someone else to solve. The third stage is shame-mongering, in which all parties with a stake in the problem enter into a frantic dance of self-defense, assigning blame and claiming credit. Fourth comes blood on the floor. In just about every crisis, a high profile person pays with his job, and sometimes he takes a crowd with him. In the fifth and final stage, the crisis gets fixed and, despite prophesies of permanent doom, life goes on, usually for the better.

Interesting and logical. This analysis applies to each level of society in the Katrina crisis. The personal and family level, private charity, local government, state and federal. Within each of these, except on the level of the individual, there is a structure involving a hierachry and leadership at the top is tested by the crisis. I think that the media blew it by jumping straight to the shame-mongering stage because they have been looking for ways to attack Bush ever since he decided to run for President. I think that as time goes by, people who are fair minded will realize that there are limits to what national government can do in responding to things like this.