September 10, 2005 - The Battle of New Orleans is just starting. It is not about saving people, or rebuilding the city and the shattered lives of the people who used to live there. It is not about getting Canal Street ready for next years Mardi Gras or opening Bourbon Street to tourist dollars. It isn’t about which restaurant serves the best crawfish etouffee or whether the best Muffelettas come from Central Grocery. It is about rewriting history to make sure that the effluent of blame is splashed somewhere else – anywhere else. The White House is in full battle mode and sending wave after wave official Washington to tour the Gulf Coast for the cameras. These are lightning strikes, quick hits to assure that the principals are back in Washington for the Sunday Morning talk show circuit.

As in any battle some of the troops are expendable. Just a short week ago FEMA head Michael D. Brown was basking in the glow of Presidential praise. “You’re doin’ a hellova job, Brownie.” Yesterday Brownie got sent to the showers. It wasn’t that he had turned Nathan Bedford Forrest’s advice on how to win a battle on its head. Nobody in the White House cared that Brown’s FEMA had gotten there “lastest with the leastest”. What got Brown sent to the showers was that he got himself caught in the process.

It wasn’t as though Mike needed to exaggerate his credentials to get the job. Brown came to FEMA when his college roommate, Joe Albaugh came to his rescue. Brown had just been fired as Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His friend Joe was FEMA director, his reward for having been the President’s national campaign manager. Joe brought Mike aboard, first as house counsel and then as Albaugh’s number two. When Albaugh left to the greener pastures as a lobbyist for Halliburton Mike moved on up to the director’s chair. Every thing was fine until Katrina came calling and Michael D. Brown had to take a little trip down the Mighty Mississip.

It was just a simple case of padding the resume`. Somehow a schoolboy stint as an intern in the Edmund, Oklahoma City Manager’s office became “Assistant City Manager with emergency services oversight”. Somehow “outstanding political science student” became “Outstanding Political Science Professor”. Then a curious Time reporter started checking the resume` and that is why Homeland Secretary Chertoff was dispatched to the front lines of the battle to send Brown home.

The Secretary assured us that Brown was just returning to Washington to see to the agency’s other routine duties. There are, the Secretary said, other storms brewing in the Atlantic and FEMA has to be prepared to deal with them. Soon Mike will find that he needs to spend more time with his family and return to the private sector like his old friend Joe. In fact, I’ll bet he called Joe the first thing this morning. But then that is a horse of a different color.