Chertoff's CYA

Politicians are excellent at trying to deflect blame. It's a necessary survival technique. If they screw something up, they need to be able to blame someone else or they run the risk of getting voted out of office by a public who only sees the mistake and won't take the time to figure out if there's a reasonable explanation. That's a pretty patronizing view of the American public, of course, but it might not be that far off base for the majority out there.

At any rate, I can understand when politicians reflexively try to deflect blame in light of the devastation of New Orleans. I don't agree with it, because especially in this situation, the American public is voraciously consuming anything they can get about the disaster. They're very well informed on this. Any cover-your-ass maneuvering will instantly stink to the vast majority of people out there. It doesn't work.

That's why it's stunning to see what Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff is saying. This guy actually has the gall to come out and blatantly lie about whether government officials had predicted whether such a disaster could occur:

That "perfect storm" of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight.

Unbelievable. As the CNN article goes on to report, this exact scenario had been brought up many times, by government officials, scientists and journalists. They had even war-gamed the situation back in 2004.

Chertoff also claims that they didn't have enough specific warning that this storm would hit the area with such force, saying they only had "a day, maybe a day and a half" of warning. But the National Hurricane Center was predicting as early as the Friday before that the storm could be Category 4, with New Orleans in its path. The prediction was almost perfect.

So it sounds like Chertoff is lying and hoping desperately to not get caught. Or maybe he actually believes what he's saying. In that case, he has been stunningly misinformed, especially for the director of Homeland Security. In either case, the president should do something right in all of this and not wait for Chertoff's inevitable resignation, but fire him as soon as there's some stability to the situation.