Hi TJ - Hmmm. Part of your argument is a generalized case against represenative government, the other part being the decline of the US electorate and the political classes.
I am going to argue that the New Orleans situation is an aberration, the result of an dysfunctional and misguided (FEMA) combined with a 3 sigma event (large Cat 4-5 Hurricane path within 20 miles of New Orleans.
Let's see if I can even convince myself.
Normmaly, both the elctorate and political classes are primarily concerned with major policy decisions, economic events, and the occasional socisl issue. Thus, items like cold war policy, defense budgets, go to war, quit a war, economic growth, wealth building and distribution, NAFTA, relations with China, Russia, EU, inflation, plus occasionally civil rights, abortion, drugs, etc.
One can argue that agencies like the FAA, which regulates aircraft safety and operation, are not something that the political class should spend much time one, except when the cicumstnaces change rapidly. The FCC is a good example where changing technology and economics - wireless, internet etc. - required active, hands on political involvement. This happened with Reed Hunt and later Micheal Powell, and resulted in moderately effective deregulation, Wi-Fi, widespread broadband access, etc., and the associated economic development.
Now the FCC heads back to the minor issues of how much of Janet Jackson's breast is appropropriate for family TV.
FEMA is a pretty obscure agency, with weird cold war beginings, originally designed to coordinate the survival and re-establishment of the Federal government and some kind of economic function after a massive nuclear strike. Left, right and center politicians have been suspicious of FEMA since day one, since that mission require extraordinary powers, secrecy and hidden agendas (don't want your recovery plans to be the part of the enemy'starget list), triage plans for whole populations - who gets into the safe bunkers, etc.
It ended up adding disaster management around the 1970s.
FEMA track record with Hurricanes from about Hurricane Andrew on now looks pretty good.
So this may be a negative abberation, one of a number -
>Los Alamos & Wen Ho Lee
>Branch Dividians and BATF / FBI at Waco, Texas
>Forrest Service and fires in Yellowstone, and later Colorado.
There were some positive excursions -
>US Treasury under Robert Rubin and immediate successors
>George HW Bush and massive coalition in first Gulf War.
>"Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, and getting the EU to actively participate AND think it was their idea. (maybe it was...)
> Orphan drugs and Fast track at FDA
So I think the New Orleans FEMA response is an outlier on the bell curve....for now. |
