"Problem solvers"

The latest excuse for not firing failed horse association executive and FEMA director Michael Brown:

Mr. Bush also resisted renewed calls to fire Michael D. Brown, the director of FEMA, who became a lightning rod for attacks last week when he said he was unaware of a crisis at the New Orleans convention center, news of which had been televised for days. Instead, Mr. Bush accused critics of playing the "blame game" and said he would remain focused on the immediate crisis as evacuees fanned out across the country.

"We've got to solve problems; we're problem-solvers," he said. "There will be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong. What I'm interested in is helping save lives."

We can all agree -- the problem of not having enough firefighters in the background for President Bush's photo-ops has been solved. Everything else... well, not so much.

Update 9/7: Here's an example of Bush administration "problem solving" from CNN via Wonkette:

A South Carolina health official said his colleagues scrambled Tuesday when FEMA gave only a half-hour notice to prepare for the arrival of a plane carrying as many as 180 evacuees to Charleston.

But the plane, instead, landed in Charleston, West Virginia, 400 miles away.

Don't worry, though - Bush is going to investigate his own failure to adequately deal with Katrina!

Comments

[beloml]

Why are people complaining about the slow Federal response, when this time last year they were complaining that the overly-fast Federal response to the Florida hurricanes was an election year ploy - even though the response then was slower than the response was for a disaster larger than all of last year's storms, *combined*.

[tof]

don't laugh i have found that same mistake in famous political science datasets.

[Rich O.]

Ok, I'm curious beloml, who exactly was "omplaining that the overly-fast Federal response to the Florida hurricanes was an election year ploy?" Got a source on that? An elected official, columnist, talk show host or major blogger?

Otherwise I'll just assume you're making stuff up.

[Brendan Nyhan]

Jacob Weisberg recently made a similar argument on Slate.