No Experience Necessary

When you choose someone to head the nation's emergency management institution, wouldn't you think that finding someone with experience would be a top priority? Or is that just crazy liberal thinking? It turns out that Mike Brown had essentially no experience in emergency management other than a small stint in the 1970s in a small suburb of Oklahoma.

How did he get the job? According to Judd Legum, a recent guest on Democracy Now:

Well, as far as I can tell, his primary qualification seems to be that he was the college roommate of Joe Allbaugh, who was the outgoing FEMA director, because prior to that, besides a short stint in a very small suburb of Oklahoma in the 1970s involved with emergency management, he really has no experience.

Oh how nice. I can see it now. Bush is going over his resume and says:
"Says here you and Joe were college roomates."
Mike Brown says, "Yes, sir."
"Well I guess that qualifies ya. As long as you know the right people, right? It's not what you know, it's who ya know."

The way things played out it's a wonder if anybody at FEMA had any experience. In his interview with Amy Goodman, Judd Legum actually goes into some detail abou the number two and three guys at FEMA:

Well, the number two at FEMA, he was actually head of advance for the Bush-Cheney campaign. So, essentially what he was charge of is planning events. And what's interesting is the FEMA response actually reflects his experience. Because what happened when there were -- you know, when Mike Brown made the request and said finally, you know, we need a thousand members from the Department of Homeland Security to come down and help out, they were really, you know -- they were charged with, you know, representing and putting a good face
on the relief efforts. And that was explicitly what Mike Brown asked for. And then when these firefighters volunteered from all around the country, they were put -- made public relations officers. So I think really the experience of the number two guy there, the chief of staff, and even as you go down the line, the number three really was a media strategist, did work for
Maverick Media, which is the company that did campaign ads for the Bush-Cheney campaign. So, if you really look at the operation and how FEMA responded to it, they really responded to it more like a political campaign than a disaster.

Prior to getting his cushy government job, Mike Brown was the commissioner of judges at the International Arabian Horse Association. He did some very important work there:

To give you an idea of what he did there, he spent a year investigating whether a breeder performed liposuction on a horse's rear end.

Just the guy to head FEMA, right?

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