Bye-bye, 'Brownie'

Just days after the Times Picayune wrote an open letter to the chimpanzee who resides in the White House (apologies to all intelligent chimps!), more newspapers are following their lead with some good advise for Dear Leader. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has an Editorial in today's issue calling on the president to fire Brownie. Flip over to read it (it's short).

From The Cleveland Plain Dealer of Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005:

Bye-bye, 'Brownie'

Bush needs to put aside his overactive sense of loyalty and rescue FEMA from the incompetent in charge

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Memo to President George W. Bush: For once in your administration, hold someone responsible for abject failure. Fire your FEMA director -- now. Today.

Michael Brown, the affable lawyer-buddy of your old campaign manager, Joe Allbaugh, brought no special skills -- nor presented any substantial liability -- to the emergency management agency when Allbaugh installed him deep in its bureaucracy four years ago.

But Peter's Principle has proven true yet again. "Brownie," as you affectionately dubbed him, has risen to the ultimate level of his incompetence -- the directorship of a lifesaving agency, the administration of which last week demanded a great deal more than he was capable of providing.

 We realize that the disaster area is huge, and that thousands of FEMA workers and others have poured themselves into many successful rescues. But the glitches -- the supplies that were not delivered, his inability to get the operation moving -- cannot be tolerated.

It is beyond belief that the head of the federal rescue operation did not know of the thousands of refugees huddled in the New Orleans convention center -- people whose plight had been the central fare of television coverage for days -- until journalists told him of their wretchedness. And you, who even with that loyalty-uber-alles approach to your underlings last week found the progress "not acceptable," could muster only a "heckuva job, Brownie" for the man in the middle of the muddle?

Mr. President, do you remember from your days as a Texas Rangers baseball club owner the truism that the ball has a way of finding the fielder least able to handle it? Well, that's what happened to Brown.

But FEMA is not a baseball team, and response to a national catastrophe is not calculated like a fielding average. Brown's dithering almost certainly cost lives.

You've put a Coast Guard vice admiral -- from the service that was in there snatching victims off the roofs before the wind stopped blowing -- in Brown's office to see that search-and-rescue continues, at least. Now, excuse its main occupant. Thank him for his service, give him his medal -- and send him home.

Although Brownie deserves to be fired, I am wondering if his firing wouldn't deflect attention from Chimpie's own glaring incompetence. I am worried that making Brownie the fall guy right now might actually absolve Chimpie from most blame.