So HW and Bubba are taking the grand money raising show on the road to help the relief effort. Fine enough, it worked during the tsunami. The two then gave an interview to CNN. And during the interview, when asked if the federal government was doing enough, Bill Clinton responded by saying that "no one could have predicted this".
And at that moment, my heart broke.
It is obviously clear that in spite of massive increases in funding and its integration into Homeland Security to "streamline response coordination," FEMA and the overall federal response to the disaster in the Central Gulf Coast, in particular New Orleans, is extremely slow and is costing lives. When President Bush made his famous statement to Good Morning America that nobody could have epxected the disaster unfolding in New Orleans, it raised my ire about as high as it could get. All the scientific evidence and testimony, all the pleas from New Orleans leaders for aid to strengthen the levee system, and no one could have predicted?? Completely ridiculous statement and proof in my mind that this adminstration does not understand the nature of the problem of ensuring help during major national tragedies.
Now, in his interview with CNN this afternoon, former president Clinton completely restated what President Bush said this morning. I could understand why he would not want to criticize the government at this time, but how could he, having been president for eight years and who signed legislation greatly increasing funds to improve the levee system in the New Orleans area, make a statemet that no one could have anticipated or expected this. Clinton spent eight years in office telling Americans that government can be a partner to improve the lives of Americans. Was that all an act? Or is he saying that while it can be a partner, at the time of cisis, when the needs of those affected are greatest, that one can not expect the state to be able to provide the immediate humanitarian aide to keep people who were cut off alive and reduce suffering.
Somehow, I have a feeling the issue is the latter. It may very well be that given the current construction of federal-state relations, it is simply impossible to expect that the federal government will be able to organize a rapid response to deal with a national crisis. Rather, due to the problem of multiple jurisdictions, it will take several days even in the best of circumstances (like having a plan for response already repaired and simulated, as FEMA apparently did with the scenario of a catastrophic flooding of New Orleans due to a hurricane strike.) Clinton, who has always believed that the State can be a partner for good to help society, has lain bare the reality that, in the worst of crises, the State simply can not provide an immediate rsponse, and those who must await assistance will simply have to do their best until the state can get the resources gathered to respond.
It truly broke my heart that it had to be Clinton telling us the sad reality of the nature of the State in America, but now we know that, barring systemic changes in how the State itself is structured, the reality will be that if a community faces a catastrophic disaster, it will simply be on its own for a period of undetermined length until the Federal government can get its response running at full steam. The best we can hope for it to try and reduce that period between disaster and Federal response to minimize the loss of life. The greatest fear I have is that we might in the future suffer a natural or manmade disaster in which the window to get aid to survivors might be so small that it will be too late to do much good once it does get there.