On Friday, the president thanked FEMA director Michael Brown — whom he affectionately calls “Brownie” — and told the world that Brown is “doing a heck of a job.” The president, of course, seems to be the only one who thinks so.
So, who is the man responsible for running FEMA during the worst natural disaster in American history? Knight Ridder had a very helpful profile over the weekend. Alas, it was not encouraging.
From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted “czar” of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown’s background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.
But as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brown now faces furious criticism of the federal response to the disaster that wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. He provoked some of it himself when he conceded that FEMA didn’t know that thousands of refugees were trapped at New Orleans’ convention center without food or water until officials heard it on the news.
“He’s done a hell of a job, because I’m not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm,” said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief. “The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience.”
Brown, whom Maureen Down described over the weekend as “the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA,” has a resume that includes absolutely no training or background in managing much of anything, worst of all an emergency. The highlight of his professional career was serving as the judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, which required him to make sure horse-show judges followed horse-show rules.
So, how’d he get the FEMA gig?
Brown’s ticket to FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, President Bush’s 2000 campaign manager and an old friend of Brown’s in Oklahoma. When Bush ran for president in 2000, Brown was ending a rocky tenure at the horse association.
Brown told several association officials that if Bush were elected, he’d be in line for a good job. When Allbaugh, who managed Bush’s campaign, took over FEMA in 2001, he took Brown with him as general counsel.
Allbaugh eventually moved on, prompting Bush to promote Brown. Now, the Gulf Coast is paying the price for the decision.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include this gem from Josh Marshall, who noted the parallel between Brown’s career and that of his boss.
So let me see if I understand this. Brown’s a Republican from the southwest. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress when he was thirty-three. Then he bounced from job to job, finally getting into the sports business in mid-life, before getting canned. And then he used connections to land himself a high-powered position in the federal government for which he had no apparent experience at all.
We should probably start preparing ourselves for “Brownie’s” presidential campaign in 2008.