Brown Dreams in N'Auleans

How small-government conservatives live with themselves:

Let me record the televised moment I knew what kind of a man ex-FEMA Chief Micheal D. Brown is:

He gets asked, at the Congressional hearings, "What did you do wrong?"

That's the cue to either be candid, of course, or to finesse it all and, as politicians do, answer a different question.

So he seems to choose candor -- lowers voice, looks straight at questioner, looks a little pained: "My mistake is ...

Really, he almost wins you just by the humble role he chooses right here ...

"My mistake was [ I couldn't overcome how ]... Blanco & Nagin screwed it up."

NO NO NO

Either you accuse -- with an entirely different approach, anger-fed -- or you accept the blame, "I couldn't get it up to get anything done on my own."

How candor works is: The style fits the content. Brown's content was "Lousiana is dysfunctional"; his style was "I am here to accept responsibilty."

Liar.

It's often dangerous to give a real, line-responsibility job to a lawyer [or alternatively a teacher, similar dynamics sometimes] who has spent a lifetime second-guessing other people's decisions and little else. Some of these "intellectual workers" never get any clue that some people's jobs require actual results.

I think that is at the root of Brown's problem, in unholy alliance with Bush & Rove's radical small government goals.

I do feel a little bit sorry for him. I imagine he's gone through a whole lifetime without noticing that some people have to put out real effort at work.