Brown made ‘chief scapegoat’ for government’s hurricane failures
Democratic members of US Congress were calling for his head.
“I would never have appointed such a person,” said New York Senator Hillary Clinton.
A more visceral indictment came from closer to the calamity. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, said: “Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot,” he told CBS. “Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don’t give me the same idiot.”
Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, tried to counsel restraint as calls for Mr Brown’s removal escalated. But even Mr Lott said: “If somebody said, ‘you pick somebody to hammer,’ I don’t know who I’d pick,” he said. “I did threaten to physically beat a couple of people in the last couple of days, figuratively speaking.”
“There is nothing more powerful than the urge to blame,” said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant who helps corporate leaders and other prominent figures try to repair tattered images. “It happens every time. It is a deeply embedded archetype in the human mind.”
Mr Brown, a 50-year-old lawyer, in some ways is an easy target.
The former head of the International Arabian Horse Association, he had no background in disaster relief when old friend and then-FEMA director Joe Allbaugh hired him to serve as the agency’s general counsel in 2001.
Back then members of both parties seemed little troubled by his background at 2002 Senate hearings that led to his confirmation as deputy FEMA chief.
Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman, who led those hearings, called his long-ago stint as assistant city manager in Edmond, Oklahoma, a “particularly useful experience”.
As FEMA chief, Mr Brown has pressed for greater attention to natural disaster planning, including strategies for a major hurricane in New Orleans.
But as the enormity of the Gulf Coast damage gradually came into clearer focus, he made comments seen as insensitive or ill-advised. For example, he acknowledged that he didn’t know there were some 20,000 evacuees in the Superdome until a day after their difficulties had been widely reported.
ABC’s Ted Koppel was incredulous as he asked Mr Brown, “Don’t you guys watch television? Don’t you guys listen to the radio?”
Mr Brown, for his part, is trying to shrug off the criticism.
“People want to lash out at me, lash out at FEMA,” he told reporters. “I think that’s fine. Just lash out, because my job is to continue to save lives.”
