I have heard a report that 5 of the top 8 officials in FEMA were from the President's 2000 campaign or his White House advance team of that time and had no experience in disaster recovery. If this is true, that's an indictment of Pres. Bush's personnel policies. Of course, this doesn't excuse the poor performance of the local and state authorities. But, if it turns out that FEMA did not perform up to the standard of previous administrations and disasters, they should be held accountable.
Assistant to the City Manager in a smaller town is one helluva lot different than assistant city manager. In fact, being the City Manager in Edmond doesn't qualify one to head FEMA under any circumstance. Brown's appointment is indefensible, it's clearly patronage. I know everyone does it, but if FEMA is as important as we are led to believe it should be, Brown's appointment is inexcuseable. He should resign, of course.