Brown Out

Mike Brown just resigned as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It looks like he's taking on the scapegoat role he said last week was being foisted on him by the media.

Just like my post below on Chertoff, I think Brown should have been fired before he had the chance to resign. But in a way, he kind of was. He was moved off of the Hurricane Katrina relief project last week after receiving near-universal criticism. Time magazine also reported on possible problems with his résumé, though much of that really seemed to be pretty minor points or legitimate matters of interpretation. Still, it was a fact that Brown had little if any experience dealing with a disaster or any special knowledge about how to deal with a disaster. He was simply the wrong person for the job.

Here's Brown's complete written statement:

Today I resigned as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As I told the President, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve this President and to work shoulder to shoulder with the hard working men and women of FEMA. They carry out an unusually difficult task under the harshest of circumstances. My respect for these dedicated professionals and this organization is unyielding.

There is no other government agency that reaches people in a more direct way. It has been the best job in the world to help Americans in their darkest hours.

Unfortunately, when something like this happens, you don't really know if you have the right person for the job until it's too late. Some people can rise to the occasion, like President Bush did immediately following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he talked to recovery workers with a bullhorn. Some people fail miserably under pressure, like President Bush did in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

In other Katrina news, it's also just been reported that 45 bodies were recovered from a New Orleans hospital that was abandoned more than a week ago. Health officials said that the bodies were patients, but there was no other immediate information. This brings the death toll to 279 in Louisiana, and officials are still hopeful that the final tally will be lower than they originally estimated.