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It may not be reassuring to hear that America's handicaps in this area are as old as the country itself. A federal system like ours is not built to plan for--or respond to--massive disasters, concedes George Foresman, the country's new Under Secretary for Preparedness. "Everything we're trying to do goes counter to how the Founding Fathers designed the system," he says, sitting in his office on the DHS campus in Washington, surrounded by pie charts documenting what needs fixing. Unlike other, more centralized governments, ours cannot easily force states or companies to act. And when the feds try to demand changes anyway, state and local officials bristle at the interference. Like teenagers, we resent paternalism--until we're in trouble. Then we expect to be taken care of.
Before he was appointed by President Bush to the new, post-Katrina preparedness job, Foresman spent more than 22 years in emergency-management in Virginia. His hiring in December was one of the few bright spots of the past 12 months, say veteran emergency planners who know him. He understands the importance of preparing for all kinds of disasters, not just terrorist attacks. But he does not soft-sell the challenge ahead. "Frankly, the American public doesn't do well with being told what not to do," he says. With reason: before James Lee Witt became FEMA director under President Bill Clinton, he was county judge in Yell County, Ark. In 1983 he made the mistake of trying to get the county to participate in the national flood-insurance program. "I almost got cremated by farmers. [They were] saying, 'Ain't no way in hell I'm going to let the Federal Government tell me where I can build a barn,'" he says.
If the feds want something to change, they have to suggest it--nicely. After the 1993 floods in the Midwest, the Federal Government, under Witt's direction, managed to do something rare: it offered to buy out flood-prone properties to prevent repeat disasters. Several communities accepted, and the government, in partnership with the state, bought back 25,000 properties. The thousands of acres left behind were converted into wetlands, which act like a sponge in storms. In 1995 the floods came again. "And guess what?" says Witt. "We never spent one dime on responding. Nobody lost everything they worked for."
Today relations between the different levels of government are at a low point. The natural tensions of a federal system have been exacerbated by an Administration that distrusts government even more than the average voter does. President Bush did not want to establish DHS to begin with. When he was pressured to do it anyway, he created a department weak in leadership, autonomy and funding.