POLITICS: Brownie, You Did a Heck of a Job...

Outrage is swirling over news that Michael Brown, the disgraced former head of FEMA, is going to speak at a conference of the Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals as their key note speaker. Brown, you may remember, resigned after the debacle that was the disaster relief efforts in the wake of 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

In one of the more iconic moments of the Bush administration, the former president forever tarnished Brown with a supposed compliment as Bush finally, after an inexplicable delay, traveled to the storm stricken areas and proclaimed, in front of all the TV cameras, that "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." Of course it was plain to the entire world that the relief effort was its own disaster. No one was doing a heck of job.

With that one line the president made Brown the personification of everything the administration's critics saw wrong with how they operated. Brown had no disaster relief experience. He seemed uniquely unqualified to be a part of FEMA, let alone the Director. He was the former head of an International Arabian Horse Association before taking over FEMA and a lawyer by trade. He was, however, a friend of the president though, and that seemed to be good enough for the Bush administration.

But here is where the story is wrong:

Of all the colossal screw ups that happened in the wake of the hurricane, Michael Brown did not commit any of them. In fact, quite to the contrary, Brown was the one man in the Bush inner-circle who sounded the warning, who tried to marshal the equipment, the people and the bureaucracy to save lives.

By placing the blame on the "Arabian Horse guy" most people miss the most incredible part of the entire episode: in the immense ineptitude of the Bush administration, it was the guy with no experience, the Arabian Horse guy--who got it right.

And no one listened to him.