Do You Believe in Fairies? (The Hidden Krugman)

Paul Krugman offers a very good, brief history of FEMA (which the Senate is considering dismantling) in his Friday column, The Crony Fairy (fully available to Times Select subscribers).

Rather than trying to fix FEMA, the report calls for replacing it with a new organization, the National Preparedness and Response Agency. As far as I can tell, the new agency would have exactly the same responsibilities as FEMA. But "senior N.P.R.A. officials would be selected from the ranks of professionals with experience in crisis management." I guess it's impossible to select qualified people to run FEMA; if you try, the Crony Fairy will spirit them away and replace them with Michael Brown. But she might not know her way to N.P.R.A.

O.K., enough sarcasm. Let's talk about the history of FEMA.

In the early 1990's, FEMA's reputation was as bad as it is today. It was a dumping ground for political cronies, headed by a man whose only apparent qualification for the job was that he was a close friend of the first President Bush's chief of staff. FEMA's response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992 perfectly foreshadowed Katrina: the agency took three days to arrive on the scene, and when it did, it proved utterly incompetent.

Many people thought that FEMA was a lost cause. But Bill Clinton proved them wrong. He appointed qualified people to lead the agency and gave them leeway to hire other qualified people, and within a year FEMA's morale and performance had soared. For the rest of the Clinton years, FEMA was among the most highly regarded agencies in the federal government.

What happened to that reputation? The answer, of course, is that the second President Bush returned to his father's practices. Once again, FEMA became a dumping ground for cronies, and many of the good people who had come in during the Clinton years left. It took only a few years to transform one of the best agencies in the U.S. government into what Senator Susan Collins calls "a shambles and beyond repair."

In other words, the Crony Fairy is named George W. Bush.

So what's the point of creating a new agency to replace FEMA? The history of FEMA and other agencies during the Clinton years shows that a president who is serious about governing can rebuild effective government without renaming the boxes on the organizational chart.

On the other hand, the history of the Bush administration, from the botched reconstruction of Iraq to the botched start-up of the prescription drug program, shows that a president who isn't serious about governing, who prizes loyalty and personal connections over competence, can quickly reduce the government of the world's most powerful nation to third-world levels of ineffectiveness.

After yesterday's release of the proposed FEMA rejiggering, there's no consensus of opinion on what should be done (via the WaPo):

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, speaking at George Mason University, endorsed several Senate findings, but opposed making FEMA an independent agency and said renaming it would be like "slapping a fresh coat of paint on."

"I'm held accountable. I want to make sure as a consequence that I have full command and control over my department," he said.

Several members of Congress and outside experts praised the report, however, or said it did not go far enough. Wherever FEMA goes, they said, it is critical to strengthen its leadership, budget, regional commands, ties to states and cities, and core functions. Any reorganization would be FEMA's third in four years.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter T. King (R-N.Y.), ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and others introduced a bill yesterday that would alter FEMA but not dismantle it.

But Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a member of Collins's committee, said FEMA should be restored to independent Cabinet-level status. House panels are preparing related bills as the House plans a week of action on Katrina issues May 22.