[Mb-civic] In Defense of Finger-Pointing - Michael Grunwald - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

In Defense of Finger-Pointing

By Michael Grunwald
Sunday, February 19, 2006; B02

A fter Hurricane Katrina paralyzed his administration, President Bush 
vowed not to "play the blame game." And when White House homeland 
security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend announced the preliminary 
results of her post-Katrina investigation last Monday, she reiterated 
that "we cannot attempt to rewrite history by pointing fingers or laying 
blame."

"Finger-pointing," like "partisanship" or "influence-peddling," is one 
of those ubiquitous Washington pastimes that is done only by other 
people. They play "the blame game" in order to "score political points," 
but we know, as a House committee noted in the 520-page Katrina report 
it released Wednesday, that "obtaining a full accounting and identifying 
lessons learned does not require finger pointing." The report opened 
with Henry Ford's famous anti-blame-game admonition: "Don't find a 
fault. Find a remedy."

But last week's post-Katrina retrospectives--Townsend's speech, the 
blistering House report and dramatic Senate hearings--included a fresh 
deluge of finger-pointing. Ousted Federal Emergency Management Agency 
director Michael Brown--who had blamed state and local officials in 
earlier testimony--pointed his finger at Homeland Security Secretary 
Michael Chertoff and the White House. Chertoff and his aides pointed 
fingers at Brown. The House report pointed fingers at just about 
everyone, including Brown, Chertoff, Bush, even the Red Cross.

The result of all this deplorable finger-pointing is that America knows 
a lot more about what went wrong during Katrina. And what's so 
deplorable about that? Sometimes, "the blame game" is just 
accountability with bad press; one man's finger-pointer is another man's 
whistleblower. After a fiasco like Katrina, there's not much difference 
between fault-finding and fact-finding; Teddy Roosevelt, Martin Luther 
King Jr. and other great finger-pointers have understood that things 
don't usually "go wrong." They're done wrong, and there's nothing wrong 
with identifying the wrongdoers.

If anything, Katrina has demonstrated that "obtaining a full accounting 
and identifying lessons learned" may indeed "require finger-pointing." 
The early scapegoating of Brown produced a series of revelations about 
his credentials, as well as his nonchalant e-mails while New Orleans 
drowned. Brown fought back by trashing Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco 
and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, exposing some state and local 
miscues. The circular firing squad helped persuade the 
Republican-controlled House and Senate to conduct aggressive Katrina 
investigations, among the most serious congressional oversight so far 
during the Bush administration. It also persuaded President Bush to get 
rid of Brown, which then freed him to speak out about the DHS 
dysfunction that helped cripple FEMA, which in turn spurred DHS 
officials to highlight Brown's role in that dysfunction.

There's no denying that finger-pointing can be partisan and 
self-serving. At first, Democrats scapegoated Brown as a symbol of the 
administration's ineptitude, while Republicans rushed to his defense. 
Since his ouster, many Democrats have defended him as an administration 
fall guy, while many Republicans have portrayed him as the single source 
of the administration's problems. But as both sides have dredged up 
evidence, some of the fog around Katrina has begun to clear. The blame 
game produces heat, but also light.

Brown has produced mounds of documents to show that his DHS superiors 
were gutting FEMA long before Katrina. But DHS officials have shown that 
Brown stubbornly refused to follow the official chain of command. Last 
week's sniping revealed that during Katrina, Brown sent e-mails to DHS 
leaders warning that the situation was dire, but never called Chertoff 
directly to sound the alarm. In fact, Brown testified that he rarely 
bothered to tell Chertoff about anything; he simply talked to the White 
House. All this bureaucratic infighting clearly hampered the federal 
government's disaster response, but it has fueled some world-class 
finger-pointing.

The White House--after hanging Brown out to dry--has publicly obeyed the 
president's directive to avoid the blame game. Townsend's speech last 
week was so nonjudgmental it was almost meaningless: Search and rescue 
teams need a "more integrated structure," military forces need "better 
integration," medical teams need "a better, more integrated structure." 
Days after Brown's testimony, she took only one strong position, 
denouncing finger-pointers who "become bitter and lash out trying to 
find someone else, anyone else, to blame." She was particularly 
dismissive of fingers pointed in one particular direction: "I reject 
outright any suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully 
involved."

The new House report concluded that President Bush was quite a bit less 
than fully involved, a rare rebuke from the GOP Congress. But sometimes, 
finger-pointing is just oversight with bad press. And when Washington 
types make sweeping proclamations about the blame game, it's a pretty 
good bet they're nervous about getting blamed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/17/AR2006021702497.html
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