You have a point,
But it sure seems no one wants to put that load of responsibility on the
Mayor of New Orleans , nor the Governor of Louisiana,....and the
responsibility really did lie with them first. The city and the State
dropped the ball first. The Fed response was not enough, hopefully that will
continue to get fixed. But the Governor of LA's running of the entire
situation shows an extreme lack of any kind of leadership for that office.
And that statement is said with no political bias of anykind, because I do
not know anything about the Gov of LA! R or D, man or woman, white black
hispanic I don't know. What I do know is the person should not be in charge
of a small town, much less running a State.
You use a great analogy of the sailor steering the ship. Well notice how
the responsibility falls on the commander of the ship. It does not fall on
the Commanding Officer of the Fleet, nor the Secretary of the Navy, nor the
Commander in Chief. Before fingers are pointed in the direction of the
President , we have to point them at the local and State officials,..there
failures made this alot worse than it had to be. Those failures also have
made it worse for any type of relief effort.

Patrick
student SPL
aircraft strutural mech

"Rich Lemert" wrote in message
It doesn't really matter whether the President has any direct
"responsibility" for the situation in New Orleans - this happened
on his watch, so he's responsible for how it's handled. He may have -
and in fact probably does - delegate _authority_ for emergency
management, but you can't delegate responsibility. (Ask any US Navy
commander - who's career often depends quite literally on the 19 year-
old that's 'driving' his ship not running into anything.)