Krugman on Bush

Krugman's column today (sorry, subscribers only) talks a little about the history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which recently fell flat on its face in dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A Senate Committee has just recommended abolishing FEMA and replacing it with a new agency. One of the reasons FEMA failed was a lack of qualified people, somehow the new agency will be able to rectify this.

Krugman points out that FEMA was a nesting ground for Bush Senior's cronies, and FEMA flubbed its response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Clinton appointed a professional to head FEMA, and gave him the leeway to hire other professionals, and FEMA came to be regarded as one of the best Federal Agencies. Bush Junior, however, resumed his father's ways, and reduced FEMA to "a shambles and beyond repair" (Senator Susan Collins' assessment).

...the history of the Bush administration, from the botched reconstruction of Iraq to the botched start-up of the prescription drug program, shows that a president who isn't serious about governing, who prizes loyalty and personal connections over competence, can quickly reduce the government of the world's most powerful nation to third-world levels of ineffectiveness.

King George has no clothes; and it is to the lasting shame of this generation that they gave him not one, but two terms in office. If the generation of the Depression and World War II has a claim to being the greatest generation, then this generation has an even stronger claim to being the dumbest.