Whither Federalism?

Emotion will trump facts and logic every single time. Show me people suffering, hungry, thirsty, sick and homeless and I will be sympathetic. Immerse them in chaos and lawlessness and I will demand to know why “somebody” isn’t doing “something.” But what ever became of federalism?

Remember the big argument at the founding of our nation? Remember the discussions about the dangers of a strong federal government? Remember that concept of frontier independence and the demands for local autonomy? Got any recollection of that old cliché regarding “delegated and reserved” powers? What happened to it last week?

Stand back for a moment from the images of human misery. Take a deep breath and start at the beginning in assessing blame or inordinate dependence upon the largesse of the nation. We’ve got a metropolis, a huge arguably modern city populated by a demographic mélange heavily weighted toward ethnic minorities and poverty. The overlay is of a city dedicated to tourism, hedonism and “Laissez les bons temps rouler”.

Convention-goers and Mardi Gras revelers would bunk in the high rise, air-conditioned hotels, stroll the Riverwalk, dine at Emeril’s or Antoine’s, slum through the flesh pots of the French Quarter and spend the morning across from Jackson Square munching beignets and sipping chicory coffee at Café du Monde. The drunks and druggies roaming the Quarter filling a plastic cup with the dregs of discarded liquor bottles culled from the garbage of the previous night’s revelry were largely over-looked.

But, this was a major city and it had hundreds of thousands of folks living down darkened streets in small houses and apartments—some neat, some unkempt, but all of them below sea level. From Canal Street’s terminus in front of the Trade Center you could see the ships passing by along the Mississippi ABOVE your head! The entire city was in a huge basin surrounded by water and defended by levees and pumps. Picturesque possibly, but unwise in the extreme.

Now, let’s consider federalism again. Who is responsible for where people choose to live? Not Washington. Who is responsible for local government? Emphatically not Washington. Who maintains order, provides services, plans for the future and carries out the will of the local electorate? How about the City of New Orleans?

The Blame Game

When problems extend beyond the city limits or are regional in nature who then should be dealing with them? If you said Washington, please go back to paragraph one and start over. The answer is the state and parish governments. Yep, we still haven’t gotten to the federal level of responsibility.

So, historically we know some things about Gulf Coast weather. There are hurricanes and they seem to occur in greater or lesser severity every year. When they come up the Gulf and hit the soft underbelly of the US, in places like Galveston, New Orleans, Biloxi, Mobile or Pensacola, the damage can be severe. We know all this.

What then should a prudent city administration do? How about have a plan for the inevitable? How about preparing an evacuation plan? How about preparing shelters and stocking them with minimal survival supplies? How about creating a back-up communications network? How about training and instructing folks on what can and what should happen in the event of an emergency? Is anyone holding the city administration responsible here?

Am I the only one who noticed the evacuation traffic jams on the outbound lanes of the highways while the inbound lanes remained empty? Has no one there ever gone to a major sporting event and noticed how traffic is managed to use all of the lanes to get people in and then they are reversed to get them out?

What about those school buses that weren’t used? How about water and MRE storage in designated shelter sites? What about security and health care? Why was an attitude of disregard for warnings of impending doom allowed to develop over years of hurricane exposure? Either there was no plan or there was no one in charge to implement it.

And, most importantly, who taught all of those folks who disregarded the warnings, disobeyed the orders and then found themselves in dire straits that the folks in Washington DC were responsible for getting them food, water, health care and security on demand? Now we’ve got Oprah wailing, Geraldo in tears, and Reverends Jackson and Sharpton implying that hurricanes are a racist plot by the Bush administration.

The poor of New Orleans were ill-served, but it wasn’t Washington that served them poorly. It was their local government that failed them. Their Mayor and Governor didn’t prepare well and then didn’t respond well when faced with the results. All they could do was lead the whining and blame Washington.

Now, the damage is done. Many are dead and much will be required to fix the foundations of our society. We’ve seen how thin the veneer of civilization can be and we should be very disappointed in that which we have fostered. In the coming weeks the posturing will continue as politicians seek to float their own boats and insure their own success in future elections. We’ll regularly hear the cause stated in the passive voice, “mistakes were made” but we’ll seldom hear who really made them.

But, most of all we’ll see yet another stake driven through the heart of American self-reliance and independence. Federalism increasingly is becoming a relic of a distant past. And, that is too bad.