Of all the sad tales of cronyism and ineptitude emerging out of the Katrina catastrophe, probably none is more telling than the history of FEMA under the oversight and management of President Bush.

So let’s review the outlines of the story, beginning with the president’s inauguration in January 2001. Like everything in the second Bush White House, the surest clue to how the administration would proceed was to find what the Clinton White House had done and then expect the opposite.

President Clinton had appointed the first FEMA director with actual emergency-management experience, James Lee Witt. And Witt had gone on to reshape the organization into what was considered a model government agency. Clinton even gave FEMA Cabinet-level status.

Bush demoted the agency’s status and put it in the hands of his chief political fixer, Joe Allbaugh, who went about dismantling much of what Witt had built. As he told Congress in May 2001: “Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management. Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level.”

Tapping Allbaugh, a political operative with no clear experience for the job, was the first clear sign of the importance the new administration attached to the agency’s responsibilities. And that attitude suffused hiring pretty much down the line. As his general counsel, Allbaugh picked his old college roommate Michael D. Brown, another political hire with no emergency-management experience whatsoever.

Brown was a GOP party activist who had worked for the previous decade as a commissioner with the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to run horse shows. But by 2000 things at the IAHA were getting rocky for Brown. Indeed, he would soon be fired for what the Boston Herald describes “a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.” But he was already thinking about his next gig. Brown told friends that a good job would be in it for him if Bush won in November 2000 — as indeed it was.

Once Brown was at FEMA, it was onward and upward. By the end of the year, Brown was promoted to deputy director; his replacement as general counsel was Mark Wallace, another lawyer and political operative who came up through Jeb Bush’s political campaigns down in Florida.

This was in the period that FEMA was being folded into the new Department of Homeland Security. But it was also during the buildup to the Iraq war. So once American troops were on the ground in Iraq, Allbaugh resigned from FEMA. And with the help of now-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, he set up New Bridge Strategies, a consultancy to cash in on the Iraqi contracts bonanza.

On Allbaugh’s departure from FEMA, Brown became director, in charge of federal domestic emergency management in the United States. That left Brown — only a couple years out from getting fired from the job running horse shows — in charge of domestic emergency management for the federal government during the war on terrorism.

Once he was in charge, Brown kept up the same level of professionalism in hiring practices. His No. 2 at FEMA — Chief of Staff Patrick Rhode — was an advance man for Bush-Cheney 2000. His deputy chief of staff, Scott Morris, was a “media strategist” with Maverick Media, Bush adviser Mark McKinnon’s ad shop down in Texas.

Now, in the wake of Katrina, it seems even Allbaugh may be getting back into the act. But not for the government, mind you. According to The Washington Post, he was already on the scene in Louisiana “helping coordinate the private-sector response to the storm” as early as Aug. 31 — even beating a lot of FEMA staffers to the scene.

Since this is domestic influence-peddling, rather than work in Iraq, Allbaugh’s shop is the Allbaugh Co. And a quick look at his client list gives you some sense of why he was on the scene so quickly down on the Gulf Coast.

Back in March of this year, Allbaugh signed on as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR to “educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues.” Another client, the Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, already has a new headline on its site: “Hurricane Recovery Projects — Apply Here!”

Since Michael Brown doesn’t look as though he’s long now for the FEMA job, maybe the Allbaugh Co. will offer him a new job. After all, he and Allbaugh were college roommates. And I bet the Allbaugh Co. is hiring.

Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com. His column appears in The Hill each week.
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