The story that the Associated Press released yesterday, and all media outlets immediately jumped on, about how “Bush knew” the levees were going to break in advance of Hurricane Katrina, is yet another example of the media turning a minor news item into a story about their own inherent bias. The twisting of timing and context in an attempt to create an image of President Bush contradicting himself (BUSH LIED, PEOPLE DIED) is almost embarrassing.

Clearly, everyone knew that New Orleans could be flooded by a major hurricane. They’d been anticipating it for decades. Every time a hurricane blew into the Gulf of Mexico, there would be media stories about the implications of a direct hit on New Orleans—a city sitting at the bottom of a bowl, with water lapping around the outer rim. Whether it could be flooded by the levees being “topped” or by being “breached” was a matter of debate and uncertainty. However, a big enough hurricane hitting near enough was certain to cause a catastrophe for the city.

When President Bush, on Good Morning America several days after the effects of the storm were known, said “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees,” he wasn’t talking in general terms, as in “Nobody ever dreamed this would happen, least of all me.” That would be beyond absurd, and he would’ve been laughed out of the presidency that very day. Yet, this is how the media would have us interpret that comment now?

President Bush was speaking about very recent events and the relatively sneaky progress of the disaster. After the hurricane hit, if anyone cares to remember, New Orleans was considered (for about a day) to have dodged the bullet. Damage was significant, but not of catastrophic proportions. New Orleans was not filled with water. And in our 24-hour news cycle world, where wars are expected to be won in days, and hours can seem like weeks, the pictures of dry streets in New Orleans were understood to be telling us that the feared-for disaster had not arrived. Yes, there was a story starting to come out about water “topping” a levee somewhere, but there was no general call to alarm, no declaration that disaster was imminent. Most importantly, the people who should have known—the officials on the ground whose job it was to protect their community, and who had had years to prepare for this event—were not, as of that Monday, after the hurricane receded, saying that New Orleans was doomed. That Monday was the lost day—the day when Mayor Nagin should have stood up and said, “The water is coming. Everyone needs to get out of New Orleans NOW. Oh, and luckily I have all these school buses we can use …” But even Mayor Nagin himself did not “anticipate the breach of the levees,” to use Bush’s words, or else he would have raised the alarm on that day in the most uncertain terms possible.

OK? So the videotape of Bush doing his job, talking to people before the storm about possible eventualities, is not news. It’s just a videotape of things that we already knew happened.

The thing that infuriates me most about the way in which this entire Katrina story has been nurtured and mutilated in the hands of the media is the fact that it is now taken as a premise by virtually everyone (including Republicans in congress) that the Federal government failed in some huge and dramatic way. It did not. It was the Federal government, in the form of the military, who ultimately succeeded in rescuing the thousands of people who had been stashed away by their own elected officials in the New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Center. The only truly significant thing that the Federal government could have done differently was to have Lt. General Honoré ready to move in and take over as soon as Hurricane Katrina cleared the city limits. Michael Brown had it right first time around, before his situation turned into the very public disintegration of personality that it has become: the biggest mistake made by the Feds was in assuming that the city and state officials were competent—in assuming that they would be prepared to handle, at least for a few days, the aftermath of a storm that they had been planning to respond to for years.

Of-course had General Honoré been given control the day the hurricane left town, history would have been different, in terms of human suffering prevented, but we would even now no doubt still be hearing recriminations from Nagin and Blanco about how their authority was usurped. In fact, in order to move the military in against their will, President Bush would have had to declare an “insurrection.” (Imagine what the left would be saying today if Bush had declared the mayor of New Orleans to be in insurrection and had sent in the army against his will to remove thousands of black people from the city and make them live in Texas. Doesn’t take much imagination, does it? They’re saying it anyway!)

By the same token, I am sick to death of hearing about the “lessons the Federal government must learn from Katrina.” If the only mistake made was not to send the military in immediately, then the only lesson that could be learned is a bad one; i.e., always send the military in immediately when you have a disaster situation in an urban environment. That is not what serious officials in serious cities want the Federal government to do. Most cities have reasonably competent leadership, realistic contingency plans for the kinds of disasters they might face, and police forces that won’t throw down their badges when subjected to stress. The last thing a Mayor Bloomberg in New York City would want is thousands of soldiers pouring into New York after a terrorist bombing or a blackout, with his own authority being taken away by a general. What most cities need after a disaster is some time to put their own emergency plans and responses into action, see what limits they run up against, and calibrate their requests for Federal assistance accordingly. That’s what FEMA is set up to do—to work with competent local officials in bringing in the things they need to solve their local problems.

If what happened in New Orleans is taken as some kind of template to tell the Federal government what it should do differently elsewhere when there’s a crisis, then the only thing that’s sure is that the Federal government will do the wrong thing next time.

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