The disasters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina reveal some glaring weaknesses in our political structure. These weaknesses usually mean dollars wasted or bureaucratic inconvenience.

This time thousands of lives were lost because our governments could not be relied upon to do their job.

Many people these days are pointing a finger at the top, at the decisions of President Bush’s administration. The facts I have learned about how this government has acted since his first election have convinced me that he and his closest advisers should be held to account. Right after his election in 2000, the Bush administration began to remake the Federal Emergency Management Agency by cutting its budget and reducing its role in preventing damage from natural disasters.

The Bush budget severely cut the Army Corps of Engineers 2005 funding requests for the New Orleans district; especially hard hit was the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Bush himself was woefully ignorant of the dangers of flooding in New Orleans, saying on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” That was three days after the levee collapsed, when a responsible president should have been better informed.

But some of the other weaknesses in the federal response should not be blamed on Bush alone. The men in charge of FEMA since Bush took office have been political appointees, who have no business leading a federal agency. Joe Allbaugh was Bush’s chief of staff when he was governor of Texas, and a central campaign organizer in 2000, who was appointed to head FEMA in 2001. He had no emergency experience. He stayed less than two years, replaced by his college friend, Michael Brown, who not only had no experience, but had been asked to leave his previous job, where he was commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association. A current article in Time magazine alleges that Brown padded his resum in several places.

The fact that the national agency designated to help people whose lives have been catastrophically disrupted was led by an incompetent manager with no experience is a result of the American system of political patronage. Both Democrats and Republicans at the local and national level treat crucial public jobs as political plums for friends and supporters. The result is wasted money, unresponsive bureaucracy and government incompetence. That all translates into suffering for Americans who need government programs. In this case, it meant needless death and destruction.

In the 19th century, our government was plagued by a corrupt patronage system that distributed important jobs as political favors. More than 100 years ago, a professional civil service was created, in which government jobs are given out based on merit. Yet the most important positions, the heads of agencies, are still filled by political appointees rather than professionals.

The functions of our government are too complex to be handed out to political supporters.

We should demand that managers in government agencies be professionals with significant experience and a record of success. It matters less whether they are Republicans or Democrats than that they can do the jobs we require.

Those who most need an efficient government tend to be our poorest citizens. They depend on responsive federal and state bureaucracies to meet immediate and pressing needs.

Treating the work of government as a prize for political support means ignoring the plight of our neediest citizens. It will not be easy to force our elected officials to give up the power they derive from their ability to hand out high-paying jobs. The disastrous response to Katrina and its basis in political patronage may wake up some politicians to the importance of efficient and professional government services. In the end, only an outraged electorate can take back our government from those who abuse it for their own selfish purposes.

Steve Hochstadt teaches history at Bates College. He can be reached by e-mail at: shochsta@bates.edu.

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