The initial delay in enacting Federal involvement was the responsibiliy of the State Government. Now you can bitch and moan all you want about this but unless you want to change the relationship between the Federal and State governments then delays of this type will always be a possibility.

You mean Miami?

I mean it would have been horribly worse (and more comparable to Katrina) had Andrew run north from Miami to, say, Savannah, GA.

But the issue here is whitehouse.gov, and I am applying the same logic to that issue as to the hurricane. Government is not perfect, and those who expect better performance from government are largely delusional.

Thankfully, Hurricane Andrew just clipped the southern tip of Florida.

You mean Miami?

Of course it could have been handled better, but I contend that no administration would have handled the situation significantly better. I consider that dumping on the Bush administration for the way it handled Katrina is merely an exercise in partisan politics.

And as far as search-and-rescue went, the immediate post-Katrina operations were some of the largest, quickest and most successful ever.

It is strictly a matter of experience. Prior to that storm there was little or no experience for anything of that magnitude.

Andrew in '92 was about the same magnitude as Katrina, and it was handled better. Granted there wasn't the flooding problem, but still the federal response was all around much better.

Also, Florida was hit by 4 hurricanes just the year before, and people were predicting broken levees and flooding almost as soon as Katrina started tracking towards NO.

I don't buy the experience excuse.

Since I live in the New Orleans area, and since my house flooded during Katrina, and since I've lived through the trauma of evacuation and turmoil of reconstruction, I feel I have some experience to share on the government's "failure". In my opinion, no human institution on Earth, government or otherwise, would have handled the disaster any better. It is strictly a matter of experience. Prior to that storm there was little or no experience for anything of that magnitude. I would expect it would take at least three or four Katrinas in one generation to build the logistics base and expertise to handle something like that.

Not to mention ghoulish.

It's unseemly because it reads like a campaign ad. Obama should no longer be trying to point out that Bush did it wrong, because it doesn't matter anymore who did it wrong. If the same segment had made mention to "the federal government" instead of "President Bush", it would have been just as informative and not at all unseemly.

That's right. I'd actually prefer if Obama would just say what he's going to do going forward, leaving the rest implied.

Politics in the White House??? How shameful! We never had that in the Bush White House...

While I wasn't on the site every day and may have missed something, for the most part whitehouse.gov was extremely professional. It looked like a government site, helpfully listing the various speeches of the president and the like. Those speeches were themselves often political, of course, but the presentation was decidedly more understated and matter-of-fact.

I don't at all object to Obama touting his policy proposals. I just think there's a way to do that that differs by venue.

I don't see what's unseemly about it. Bush *did* fail, monumentally, and parts of the Gulf Coast are still in shambles.

It's unseemly because it reads like a campaign ad. Obama should no longer be trying to point out that Bush did it wrong, because it doesn't matter anymore who did it wrong. If the same segment had made mention to "the federal government" instead of "President Bush", it would have been just as informative and not at all unseemly.

The people who want to rebuild the low-lying land that adjoins receding wetlands and an encroaching ocean strike me as clueless or insane.

Had John Kerry been president, none of that would have happened.