FEMA: The brontosaur CAN sprint. If "properly" motivated.

Just to be clear on the previous post... the premise is not that FEMA is incapable, today, of meeting its mission objectives. The point is that senior management do not get the point. That not only do they not get out of the way of their people, they explicitly hamstring them in order "engineer outcomes" and, therefore, laurels.

The current group is the epitome of everything our business school professors warned us about. They are General Motors, circa 1956. And worse...

In their view, agencies are tools for some different, and perhaps, larger aim. Public service, and belief in whatever arcane area of expertise they may be charged with "leading," is, for this current group a seemingly pollyanna-ish and dated worldview. They view their charge to be one of remaking the world (or their part of it) in bold revolutionary strokes. The only problem is they often have to be told where the parking brake is located. And they refuse to read the manual.

But when sufficient "motivation"-- often outside mission or bylaws--presents itself, these people unleash the kind of can-do and resourcefulness that moves mountains, at least temproarily.

The only problem is, these heroic efforts come not in service of the public weal, but rather, to the crew what brung em. Case in point....

GovEXEC

...In 1992, the last time a major hurricane pummeled Florida in the homestretch of a presidential election, FEMA was caught with its pants down. Its response to Hurricane Andrew was disorganized and chaotic, leaving thousands without shelter and water. Cleanup and resupply efforts were snarled in red tape. After watching the messy relief efforts unfold, lawmakers questioned whether FEMA was a Cold War relic that ought to be abolished.

For then-President George H.W. Bush, the scene proved to be a public relations nightmare. He managed to regain his footing and win Florida three months later, but his winning margin was dramatically reduced from 1988.

In 2004, George W. Bush and FEMA left little room for error. Not long after Hurricane Charley first made landfall on Aug. 13, Bush declared the state a federal disaster area to release federal relief funds. Less than two days after Charley ripped through southwestern Florida, he was on the ground touring hard-hit neighborhoods.

Bush later made a handful of other Florida visits to review storm-related damage, but the story on the ground was not Bush's hand-holding. Rather, it was FEMA's performance.

Charley hit on a Friday. With emergency supply trucks pre-positioned at depots for rapid, post-storm deployment, the agency was able to deliver seven truckloads of ice, water, cots, blankets, baby food and building supplies by Sunday. On Monday, hundreds of federal housing inspectors were on the ground, and FEMA already had opened its first one-stop disaster relief center.

By the end of September, three hurricanes later, the agency had processed 646,984 registrations for assistance with the help of phone lines operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Fifty-five shelters, 31 disaster recovery centers and six medical teams were in operation across the state. Federal and state assistance to households reached more than $361 million, nearly 300,000 housing inspections were completed, and roughly 150,000 waterproof tarps were provided for homeowners, according to FEMA figures.

Sense the whiff of proaction. Feel the electricity of purpose in the air. Visualize your resume listing that Ambassadorship to Lichtenstein or the assistant-assistant-executive-deputy-undersecretary-slot. Now that lights a fire no hurricane can blow out.

They say fish stinks from the head down. They also say "the buck stops here," and "the captain went down with his ship."

That last one is especially poignant, given the tide.