Michael Brown should be fired, but not so much because of his agency's lackluster initial response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster -- there is more than enough blame to go around, particularly at the local and state levels in Louisiana. But this isn't the time to be assigning blame. Besides, there are a couple of other reasons why Brown should be fired that trump the fact that he didn't handle his role in the Katrina disaster response very well.

First of all, regardless of who screwed up at what level of government, in the final analysis it's his job is to coordinate emergency management for national emergencies. Right now, in the aftermath of the largest natural disaster in modern U.S. times, the President of the United States doesn't have enough confidence in Brown to keep him on the scene. So Brown is sitting on his butt in Washington D.C. while a Coast Guard vice admiral, Thad Allen, is on the ground in the hurricane zone coordinating relief efforts. He’s not doing his job because Bush didn’t think he was capable of doing it, so why does he still have a job?

Secondly, it has become pretty clear in the past few days that Brown heavily padded (lied) on his resume and the main focus of this “padding” is the only job on his resume that appeared to qualify him for his FEMA position: That he was an “assistant city manager with emergency services oversight” (straight from his FEMA bio) for the city of Edmond, Oklahoma in 1977-80. As everyone knows now, this was resume inflation on a grand scale. In fact, Claudia Deakins, public relations head for the city of Edmond, said that this position in the late-seventies was more of an intern position.

Being an assistant to the Oklahoma City city manager would be one thing, but Edmond, Oklahoma? Who has heard of Edmond outside of Oklahoma? So I did some census research which shows that Edmond had a population of 68,315 in the 2000 census, which is about double what it was in the 1980 census – 34,637 – a small city by anyone’s description. Which made Brown, not an “assistant city manager” but a gofer for the administrator of a suburb of Oklahoma City that, in the late seventies, probably had more interest in poop scooping in city parks than emergency management. Here’s the city manager’s recollection of Brown:

"Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

So, a “college intern”, a secretary, becomes “assistant city manager with emergency services oversight” in the transition from reality to Mike Brown’s FEMA bio and, undoubtedly, his resume. (Where else would FEMA have gotten it?) So, being a secretary for the administrator of a tiny city becomes the single biggest qualification Brown had to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That and being former Bush FEMA director Joe Allbaugh's college roommate. I suppose Bush didn't have any reason to doubt Allbaugh's endorsement of Brown for the position, but it seems to me that if the Bush Administration would have done a better job of vetting Brown, they might not be in the position of having a worthless hack as FEMA director. This is the worst, but not all of Brown's credential problems by far.

As if this shouldn't have been common knowledge, perhaps a little investigation would have revealed that the most substantial item on Brown's resume was this:

Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association, a breeders' and horse-show organization based in Colorado.

"We do disciplinary actions, certification of (show trial) judges. We hold classes to train people to become judges and stewards. And we keep records,'' explained a spokeswoman for the IAHA commissioner's office. "This was his full-time job ... for 11 years,'' she added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

"He was asked to resign,'' Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time.

"Asked to resign" as nearly everyone with a brain knows is to "fired" as "administrative assistant" is to "secretary". So from being fired from being the commish of the Arabian Horse Brigade, it was on to the path that would bring him to lead emergency preparedness for the entire country. Not exactly sterling qualifications for the position, if you ask me.

It's understandable that connections would be a part of getting a political position. But shouldn't the political appointee be at least a tiny bit qualified for the position? Don't get me wrong, I'm not naive and I know it happens all the time (look at the Clinton Administration), but that doesn't make it right and the position of FEMA director has become too crucial a position to be left to a political appointee who is clearly a hack. Perhaps this quote from the Wikipedia bio of Clinton FEMA director James Lee Witt, purportedly from a 1992 congressional report on FEMA is correct:

FEMA is widely viewed as a political dumping ground, a turkey farm, if you will, where large numbers of positions exist that can be conveniently and quietly filled by political appointment..

Whatever you say about William Jefferson the Philanderer, it certainly appears that James Lee Witt was just a tad bit more qualified for the FEMA director position than the current occupant. Some might argue that when we're in the middle of a huge disaster response mobilization is the last time we need to be firing the FEMA director. But he's apparently not doing anything anyway, since they kicked him out of the disaster zone. Fire his ass.