Word: blancoed
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Whether she did that as effectively or as forcefully as the catastrophe demanded is the question that now haunts the Governor. Should Blanco have told Bush she needed 7,000 cots? 200 boats? The 82nd Airborne? "I didn't give him a checklist or anything," she acknowledged in an interview. Nor should she have had to, her aides insist. Fumed one: "That's like telling a drowning man that you are not going to help him until he asks for a life preserver...
...with the exception of the mayor, no one was in a better position than Blanco to know precisely what was needed and how soon. Not until the following day--Thursday, Sept. 1--did she come up with specifics: 40,000 troops; urban search-and-rescue teams; buses; amphibious personnel carriers; mobile morgues; trailers of water, ice and food; base camps; staging areas; housing; and communications systems...
...Blanco is not the first Governor to learn those kinds of lessons the hard way. In 1992 Florida Governor Lawton Chiles came under withering criticism for waiting three days after the destruction from Hurricane Andrew before making a written request for the federal troops that were standing by with food and tents. As for FEMA, Chiles later said ruefully, it "may be well meaning, but they have no clout in the initial phase ... You've got to loudly and strongly and probably with all kinds of paper tell the White House what you need...
Further tangling the post-Katrina disaster effort was a struggle for power. On the Friday after the hurricane, as the Governor met with Bush aboard Air Force One on the tarmac of the New Orleans airport, the President broached a sensitive question: Would Blanco relinquish control of local law enforcement and the 13,268 National Guard troops from 29 states that fall under her command? State officials say Blanco considered it an odd move, given that federal control would not in itself mean any additional troops and would prohibit the guard under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 from acting...
...Republican Governor Haley Barbour of hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, he told Newhouse News Service. However, Barbour's press secretary Pete Smith told TIME that "no such request" was made of the Mississippi Governor. (Bartlett says Barbour's office made it clear early on they did not want to relinquish authority.) Blanco asked for 24 hours to consider it, but as she was meeting at midnight that Friday night with advisers, Card called and told her to look for a fax. It was a letter and memorandum of understanding under which she would turn over control of her troops. Blanco refused...