My letter to Joe Scarborough

joe@msnbc.com

Terrible sidestepping

Mr. Scraborough,

I often find your show to be nothing more than "Fox-Lite", but you sometimes manage to temper your partisan leanings with genuinely reasoned thinking, something that is totally absent on your rival network. However, last night you made such a horrific leap in logic - you caught yourself just as you were about to criticize the administration and then turned away from it so quickly that I was sure you were going to give yourself whiplash - that I am compelled to write and complain.

Towards the end of your show you were complaining about a lack of leadership that the two recent hurricanes has exposed. Without looking up the transcript, you said something to the effect of "This was a failure of leadership at the local level, that state level, and the federal level … and Congress had better get its act together”. Somehow you managed to lay blame at the Federal level, BUT ONLY CONGRESS. Only the Legislative branch bears any responsibility? Not the Administrative branch? Because, now I know I wasn’t a Congressman like you were, but it would seem like actually RUNNING the agencies of the Federal Government would fall to the ADMINISTRATIVE branch. Or was that the day I was absent in history class?

It was truly painful to watch you pull yourself back – to see that you were either temperamentally incapable of assigning blame where it belongs, or that your partisan loyalty (not even partisan, really some sort of loyalty to an administration that has no grasp on what those “regular Joe’s” you claim to represent all around the country are actually thinking) made it impossible for you to assign blame, or perhaps some corporate sense of “wait, I’m the networks Republican shill, I better not seem too critical, better not stray too far off script” made you stop from speaking what you know (and it’s clear from the look on your face and your genuine reaction to what you saw along the Gulf Coast) to be the truth.

Mr. Scarborough, the American people have seen with their own eyes what went on. You are correct - there is plenty of blame to go around. I certainly don’t know enough about local Louisiana or New Orleans politics to bother to try and defend the actions or inaction on any local officials. But AFTER Katrina hit, the only level of Government that had the capability to react in a meaningful way was the Federal, and in particular the Administrative branch – NOT CONGRESS. Congress can’t order FEMA to prepare food, water and clothes. Congress can’t order the Army Corps of Engineers to survey the damage to the levees and flood walls after the storm has passed.

I am happy to see you going to great lengths to point out what you see as failures in preparation, but don’t complain about lack of leadership when you yourself don’t have the guts to call it like it is and follow the path of responsibility all the way to where it leads, in this case the White House.

Please understand that if I thought you were simply a mouth piece for the Right, I would not bother writing. But I think that you are someone who wants what is truly best for our country, without regard to political ideology. Having seen that we are not prepared for disasters – natural or manmade, you understand that improvements must be made. You are the kind of person I can disagree with on some matters, yet discuss and debate issues, and reach agreements on others. I hope you take this note in that spirit. I am disappointed that you did not use your forum the way you should have. I expected better from you.

Sincerely,