The Blame Game and you.



On more than one occasion President Truman referred to the desk sign in public statements. For example, in an address at the National War College on December 19, 1952 Mr. Truman said, “You know, it’s easy for the Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done, after the game is over. But when the decision is up before you — and on my desk I have a motto which says The Buck Stops Here — the decision has to be made.” In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that, “The President — whoever he is — has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That's his job.”

Today, the White House came out swinging trying to do their very best to spin the events of the last week into a more favorable light for themselves. Unfortunately, the displaced masses of New Orleans didn’t cooperate – they’re just not going to go away as easily as the White House would wish:

“I need answers,” said Mildred Brown, who has been at the center since Tuesday with her husband, mother-in-law and cousin. “I’m not interested in hand-shaking. I’m not interested in photo ops.”

Yes, it seems the White House attempt to put the blame squarely at the feet of Louisiana state and city officials isn’t quite working out the way they would like it to. I said it the day after the storm hit when President Junior was out on the west coast giving another speech designed to make our country safe from terrorists. Do you think the mysterious terrorists watch this stuff? Somehow, I doubt it.

Very prominently on the news tonight the President urged the nation ‘not to play the blame game.’ I can’t say he’s doing something no one else has done - when was the last time someone, a co-worker or someone you know, actually ’fessed up to being wrong? It just is rarely done on our society these days. People accepting responsibility for screwing up is a thing of the past. We live in a world where we are all of us surrounded by beings of god-like perfection (hey, I’m not going to give myself a pass on this one either folks).

It’s tough to admit you’re wrong. It’s tough but, it’s also necessary if you want to grow.

Honestly, I would have been very surprised if the president had just come out and boldly said, “Yes, we knew a hurricane was coming. Yes, we saw that it was a category five but, never in our wildest imaginings did we believe it would be this bad. It was poor planning on the part of the federal government. An event of this scope is something which should have been handled immediately at the federal level and we screwed up royally on it.”

The days of Harry Truman and The Buck Stops Here are gone folks.

No weapons of mass destruction and now this. Hmmm, isn’t the office of the president also known by the name of Chief Executive? So, before we go off and spend millions needlessly trying to look for a scapegoat(s), why not take all that money, put it to better use helping the people affected by Katrina and just go right to the top?

I’m not blaming the mayor, the governor, the firefighters, the police, the national guardsmen, the army, the coast guard, the red cross or any of those other folks who have made it their business to get about helping these people - I’m blaming the guy who was on vacation when the storm hit and decided to take a trip out to California the day after the storm had passed. He’s the one who ultimately had the power to do something (as noted by all the things that rapidly happened after he sat up and took notice). It’s not a game, people suffered and people died because of a terrible lapse of judgement on his part and if the American people want to give the guy a pass on it, they deserve what they get.