Reconstruction Screw-Up

Paul Krugman makes the point better than I did in my cartoon, in his column exploring the ways in which the administration will screw up reconstruction in New Orleans:

Since the administration is already nickel-and-diming Katrina’s victims, it’s a good bet that it will do the same with reconstruction - that is, if reconstruction ever gets started. Nobody thinks that reconstruction should already be under way. But what’s striking to me is that there are no visible signs that the administration has even begun developing a plan. No reconstruction czar has been appointed; no commission has been named. There have been no public hearings. And as far as we can tell, nobody is in charge. Last month The New York Times reported that Karl Rove had been placed in charge of post-Katrina reconstruction. But last week Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, denied that Mr. Rove - who has become a lot less visible lately, as speculation swirls about possible indictments in the Plame case - was ever running reconstruction. So who is in charge? “The president,” said Mr. McClellan.

...

I’ve been reading “Off Center,” an important new book by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, political scientists at Yale and Berkeley respectively. Their goal is to explain how Republicans, who face a generally moderate electorate and have won recent national elections by “the slimmest of margins,” have nonetheless been able to advance a radical rightist agenda. One of their “new rules for radicals” is “Don’t just do something, stand there.” Frontal assaults on popular government programs tend to fail, as Mr. Bush learned in his hapless attempt to sell Social Security privatization. But as Mr. Hacker and Mr. Pierson point out, “sometimes decisions not to act can be a powerful means of reshaping the role of government.”

When I suggested that their natural course of action would be to award giant reconstruction contracts to corporate bigwigs, what I didn't specify was that I think this is due as much to pathetically poor planning as it is to blatant patronage.

My general point was that it should no longer come as a surprise to ANYONE when this administration demonstrates yet again just how incompetent they are with regards to governing.