Dr Chuck Pearson

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September 09, 2005

Best laugh-out-loud line in a month

From the blog of Democratic Leadership Council wonk Marshall Whittmann, AKA "the Bull Moose":

The Moose observes that we have reached such an extraordinary moment in our political life that the voice of sober minded reason is Newt Gingrich.

And I'm sure I disturbed the BIO 1010 class across the hall with my laugh. Because, dang it, the Moose is RIGHT.

The argument is laid out in full in this op-ed by David Ignatius in today's Washington Post. Check this thinking, it is so clear that I'm left feeling an idiot for not having thought it first:

Gingrich argues that the values debate that has divided America so sharply during the past decade is over. There's a broad consensus about most issues, and anyway people realize that the country's big problems aren't about morality but performance. "We're not in a values fight now but over whether the system is working," Gingrich told me. "The issue is delivery." And that's true at every level -- city, state and federal.

Gingrich's critique of the federal response is as devastating as that of any Democrat. "For the last week the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve," he wrote fellow Republicans this week. "The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable," and for that reason, "it is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed." He observes in another memo, "While the destruction was unprecedented, it was entirely predictable."

I think that's the thing that has the populace so completely infuriated. If you even CASUALLY studied the New Orleans situation, you knew full well what peril that city was in if The Perfect Storm hit. And you know how unpredictable hurricanes can be - for crying out loud, last year we had Charley, a meandering Category 2 storm in the Gulf that suddenly took a hard right turn and made landfall as a VERY destructive Cat-4.

Memo to disaster planners: if you thought you knew, you didn't know. And people died as a result. I think I'm allowed to be embittered because of that.

For even those that were prepared, we're now in a cycle of "nobody told me I had to ask permission for that" blame-gaming where one branch of government thought another one was going to do a job, and the other thought the one was going to do the job.

Somebody get the dang job done, already.

And, with Gingrich's delivery argument, I fully expect that there's going to be some kind of groundswell of people seeing this as an issue that needs to be addressed in the next round of elections. It's one thing to be concerned with issues, but if government - particularly government that has claimed a responsiblity for making sure we are Ready for the next disaster - is so hopelessly broken as to leave literally thousands of its own citizens to die, then who is to say that the ticket to electability won't be the Ability To Get The Job Done?

Posted by Chuck at September 9, 2005 06:07 AM

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Comments

Posted by: Nancy at September 9, 2005 07:21 PM

Posted by: Catie at September 10, 2005 02:38 AM

Posted by: celestia at September 10, 2005 09:38 AM

Posted by: Dr Chuck Pearson at September 10, 2005 06:05 PM