The Politics of Disaster Relief

FEMA plays a crucial role every election cycle; Only one side takes it seriously

This week, another major hurricane is anticipated to slam right into Florida again. As of this morning, Hurricane Milton is a Category 5 powerhouse, intensifying from a tropical depression to over 220 mile an hour wind gusts in less than 24 hours. This is the strongest hurricane the United States has seen since Hurricane Rita in 2005 and is already one of the strongest hurricanes EVER. Now, Florida is always a hotspot for hurricanes, but two things make this even more of a potentially extremely dangerous one. First, as it approaches Florida, all that gulf water is going to be pushed into Tampa Bay and the gulf coast creating a huge storm surge; and 2) unlike most hurricanes which go northerly along either the Atlantic or gulf coasts, this one is expected to slam dead on right across the middle of the state stretching from Florida across Orlando before turning north toward Jacksonville. That’s a lot of damage this storm could cause. The potential loss of life and property damage is uncalcuable but could be one of the largest storms in cost ever.

How the government helps in situations like that has historically had great bearing in how the candidates do in the fall elections.

Let’s hop into the PurpleAmerica time machine a second. We’re going to go all the way back to the fall of 1991. George H.W. Bush was in the White House, Nirvana Nevermind was released that September and the Silence of the Lambs was released that fall. We had won the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the Eastern European bloc had crumbled before our eyes and we were facing a brave new world.

Following up the 1980s, when tax cuts and eliminating public funding was still en vogue, Bush was still riding high from the first Persian Gulf War and the USSR collapse, but dark clouds were on the horizon. In November stock markets plunged and the Savings and Loan industry collapsed leading to recession. On top of that, the federal debt skyrocketed based on the tax cuts of the last decade. What was Papa Bush to do? He needed to find places to cut spending in the federal budget and quick.

FEMA was one of those agencies Republicans have always kind of loathed. It was an independent agency generally operating outside of partisan control, and spent money on assistance programs following disasters, when Republicans favored more private insurance and local oversight management. In addition, some of its funding had been obtained under the idea that if nuclear war were to break out, FEMA would be necessary to help manage the recovery; with no more Cold War, it was an easy target from which Republicans could gut funding, and did so. They put political hacks in key positions, diced up FEMA’s funding and demonstrated an infamous record of incompetency few federal agencies have ever achieved.

But oh George. In August, 1992, a mere weeks after the Republican Convention, Hurricane Andrew hit Florida. A massive Category 5 hurricane, it struck and engulfed Miami, crossed all of Florida and the damage across the state was catastrophic. The recovery effort was an utter debacle. FEMA had little local control, was inept at providing emergency relief and residents were vocal about their frustrations. America saw it every night on the news and come November swept the Republicans and George H.W. Bush out of office.

One of new President Bill Clinton’s first (and what many consider one of his best) hires was getting James Lee Witt installed as the new head of FEMA. When he took over the reputation of the agency was abyssmal. However, only four years later the Atlanta Journal Constitution had this to say about it:

"FEMA has developed a sterling reputation for delivering disaster-relief services, a far cry from its abysmal standing before James Lee Witt took its helm in 1993. How did Witt turn FEMA around so quickly? Well, he is the first director of the agency to have emergency-management experience. He stopped the staffing of the agency by political patronage. He removed layers of bureaucracy. Most important, he instilled in the agency a spirit of preparedness, of service to the customer, of willingness to listen to ideas of local and state officials to make the system work better."

Following Clinton’s Presidency and Witt’s tenure as FEMA head, George W. Bush dealt with 9/11 and a complete restructuring of the government, and FEMA’s place within it. Once again, it became a position of patronage. In 2003, Bush elevated the FEMA General Counsel (appointed by Bush in 2001) to FEMA Director, a little known bureaucrat named Michael Brown. Up until this point his only position of management had been as the head of the “International Arabian Horse Association.”

And then came Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Katrina was a Category Five monster 1/3 the size of the entire Gulf of Mexico that struck New Orleans and just stayed there for days dumping trillions of gallons of water on the city. The levees around Lake Ponchartrain collapsed flooding most of the lower wards and killing thousands. The entire city was flooded, and people suffered considerably. Residents had to be rescued from the roofs of their homes as dead people floated in the waters. The conditions within the Superdome, which had been set up as an evacuation center, were so abyssmal that plumbing stopped working and people called the situation inside “nightmarish.” George W. Bush initially weathered the storm at his Crawford, TX ranch, but after a week of horrible conditions, he flew over New Orleans surveying the damage only from above to much disbelief and negative press. The avalanche of criticism continued. When he eventually came to New Orleans to see firsthand the situation, he said the three words that sealed his fate:

“Heckuva Job Brownie.”

Not only was Brown’s abilities woefully insufficient for the situation, he was incompetent at providing the most basic needs for millions. Republicans pointed the fingers at local New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin (who legitimately had issues) but most of the legitimate criticism fell on FEMA and the federal government response. Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent response was still a campaign issue three years later it was so bad and permanently damaged Bush’s Presidency. His second term became synonymous with disaster.

Obama did fine with FEMA, putting in place competent managers and emergency administrators. After superstorm Sandy savaged the Eastern seaboard, Obama worked with all the governors and made sure FEMA aid flowed to where it needed to. NJ Governor and usual Obama critic, Chris Christie even lavished praise on how effective and well the aid and assistance came to his state. This is how government is SUPPOSED to work. Christie took a lot of criticism for his praise, to which he didn’t back down. He acknowledged that this is what FEMA does, and you don’t get to choose who is in what position when you need help. Obama and his FEMA director made sure help was given regardless of party.¹

However, the TEA Party crowd, a conspiratorial bunch of anti-government crusaders, used the FEMA shelters provided post-Katrina as a sticking point against Obama and Democrats, using them as the example post housing market collapse of what they claimed Democrats wanted America to steer towards. The propaganda, if utterly wrong, was effective. To this day, many southern anti-government wackadoodles still believe this trope. Trump only expands on it, particularly when he wants to stir up a crowd by using FEMA as a curse word.

And Trump’s disaster management was utterly atrocious.

While it could be said that other Republican Presidents truly tried and were befallen by either incompetent FEMA administrators or conditions of their own doing, Trump may be the only President to actively undermine everything FEMA tries to do. If it’s intentional, who’s to say. But Trump has a record of just messing everything up.

When a hurricane was expected to hit Florida, and his job was to warn people to evacuate or prepare, he decided unilaterally through the use of a sharpie to expand where he thought the hurricane would go, completely against where most meteorological models said it would.

When the COVID epidemic hit, FEMA was a main instrument for the government response. However, because surplus materials, including masks, ventilators and other health emergency supplies and funding was woefully insufficient, sold off during Trump’s earlier Presidential years, the virus got a foothold, spread and was endemic in a very short time. Millions died. At one point Trump advocated the use of a anti-malarial drug, hydroxychoroquine, as a legitimate cure, and suggested people inject themselves with bleach. When people look to the President for reassurance that all that can be done was being done, they looked at Trump and only got more questions and assured incompetence.

It wasn’t until Biden took office that supplies, facilities and vaccines were properly provided to the public in the quantities necessary to stem the virus. But now, as if on cue, the Republicans are coming out of the woodwork to criticize President Biden’s (actually pretty good) response to Hurricane Helene. They’re so pathetic they are even using fake images and slop party leaders are using to throw against the wall to see what sticks. The egregiousness in which they used doctored and AI imagery to make their case, and propagandize on social media, is frankly galling.

The main point I want to stress by this post is that when it comes to emergency relief, you never know when you’re going to need it, or how, until something unexpected happens. It is the most important and basic service government provides, regardless of who is the party in control at the time. You never know what the dangers are going to be but you have to anticipate it. One party is a positive steward of the public trust in this regard. They go about making sure we are prepared as a society for various contingencies and that we have an organization structure in place for when things go wrong. They understand what needs to be done and are on the ground making sure people get what they need and are helping. The other party loves to play politics with emergency response. They cut it, stock the agency with hacks and bureaucrats, believe that the only real response needed is to market themselves and make sure that they get credit for whatever small amount they provide or else they disparage whatever the other side does when partisanship is the LAST thing we need in emergencies. One party demonstrates care, the other encourages carelessness in every sense of the word. And one person who happens to be the Republican candidate for President genuinely couldn’t care less about any of it.

Choose wisely.

PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories

For a really great look into the Pandemic response, and what the pubic health agencies, FEMA and government response looked like within the Tump White House, I strongly recommend Michael Lewis’ book “Premonoition,” which is scathing in its criticisms.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“Whenever you know the name of the FEMA admininstrator, it’s either because they are tragically horrible at their jobs, or they are in the process of cleaning up that guy’s mess.”

Former Massachusetts House Member Barney Frank

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. A major reason Christie lost in the 2016 Republican primaries is that adversaries ridiculed him for giving Obama praise. To his credit, he has always said the way the federal government handled Superstorm Sandy has been a net positive (if albeit not all of it went smoothly).