Decision Points

That left me in a tough position. If I invoked the Insurrection Act against her wishes, the world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states’ rights tension, could unleash holy hell. I had to persuade the governor to change her mind. I decided to make my case in person the next day.
    I was as frustrated as I had been at any point in my presidency. All my instincts told me we needed to get federal troops into New Orleans to stop the violence and speed the recovery. But I was stuck with a resistant governor, a reluctant Pentagon, and an antiquated law. I wanted to overrule them all. But at the time, I worried that the consequence could be a constitutional crisis, and possibly a political insurrection as well.

    On Friday morning, Day Five, I convened a seven o’clock meeting in the Situation Room with the government-wide Katrina response team. “I know you all are trying hard as you can,” I said. “But it’s not cutting it. We have to establish order in New Orleans as soon as possible. Having this situation spiral out of control is unacceptable.”
    As Mike Chertoff and I walked out to Marine One for the trip to the Gulf Coast, I delivered the same message to the press pool. “The results are not acceptable,” I said. “I’m headed down there right now.”
    We took Air Force One into Mobile, Alabama, where I was met by Governors Bob Riley and Haley Barbour . Both were impressive leaders who had carried out effective evacuation plans, worked closely with local authorities, and launched recovery operations rapidly.
    I asked Bob and Haley if they were getting the federal support they needed. Both told me they were. “That Mike Brown is doing a heck of a job,” Bob said. I knew Mike was under pressure, and I wanted to boost his morale. When I spoke to the press a few minutes later, I repeated the praise.
    “Brownie,” I said, “you’re doing a heck of a job.”
    I never imagined those words would become an infamous entry in the political lexicon. As complaints about Mike Brown’s performance mounted, especially in New Orleans , critics turned my words of encouragement into a club to bludgeon me.
    Our next stop was Biloxi, Mississippi . I had flown over the area two days earlier, but nothing prepared me for the destruction I witnessed on the ground. I walked through a wasteland. There were uprooted trees and debris strewn everywhere. Virtually no structures were standing. One man was sitting on a block of concrete, with two smaller slabs in front. I realized it was the foundation of a house. The two slabs used to be his front steps. Nearby was a mangled appliance that looked like it might have been his dishwasher.

    Sitting with a Biloxi, Mississippi, man on what used to be his front steps.
White House/Eric Draper
    I sat next to him and asked how he was holding up. I expected him to tell me that everything he owned had been ruined. Instead he said, “I’m doing fine. … I’m alive, and my mother is alive.”
    I was struck by his spirit and sense of perspective. I found the same outlook in many others. One of the most impressive people I met was Mayor A.J. Holloway of Biloxi. “All the Way Holloway” had been a running back for the 1960 National Champion Ole Miss football team. While Katrina destroyed more than six thousand homes and businesses in Biloxi, there wasn’t an ounce of self-pity in the mayor. He resolved to rebuild the city better than before. Governor Barbour put the spirit of the state into words when he said people were “hitching up their britches and rebuilding Mississippi.”

    With Haley Barbour.
White House/Eric Draper

    Our final stop was New Orleans, where I made my appeal to Governor Blanco on Air Force One. Despite my repeated urging, she made clear she wasn’t going to give me an answer on federalizing the response. There was nothing to gain by pushing her harder; the governor was dug in.
    After a helicopter tour of the flooded city, we touched down at a Coast Guard station near the breached Seventeenth Street levee. On one side of the levee sat the town of Metairie, relatively dry. On the other was Orleans Parish, deep underwater for as far as I could see. I stared into the three-hundred-foot breach, a gateway for a destructive cascade of water.