Louisiana and New Orleans Were Derelict in Their Duty to Their Own People

On Monday I suggested George Bush (search) might want to think about firing some people, perhaps starting with FEMA director Mike Brown (search), mainly for the offense of spending so much time on TV with his foot in his mouth over the slow response to the disaster.

Howls of protest showed up in the e-mail: "How dare you blame Bush. How dare you blame FEMA (search)."

Well, ok, let me be as clear as I can.

The state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans were absolutely derelict in their duty to their own people. Everybody who lives in a disaster zone knows you can't count of the feds for three days. Forget it, the feds can't get there any faster with any significant relief.

Cities have to get along on their own for a little while. New Orleans knew it and Louisiana knew it.

Yet no state or city official parked a few truckloads of water and MREs [Meals Ready to Eat] at the Superdome or at the convention center, where they knew flood refugees would congregate.

Why do you think the Astrodome in Texas was all set up for thousands of refugees? Because the Astrodome is always set up to take thousands of refugees from Galveston, another place everybody knows will get hammered again someday.

So the pitiful leadership of the Democrat administration in Louisiana and New Orleans gets most of the blame. Nobody should have known better than the locals how vulnerable the city of New Orleans was.

Having said that, I will repeat what I think a lot of people sense: The president has to backstop basket case cities and woefully inadequate mayors and governors.

Sorry, Democrat or Republican, he just does. You can't have Cuba offering assistance to American flood victims.

National Guard or Military choppers should have landed at crowded evacuation points and put water and food on the ground.

But, ultimately, the horror in New Orleans is not as much the fault of George Bush as it is the fault of the governor and the mayor. They are always primarily responsible for their city and they let their city down.

However, Bush should still fire some people. They let the rest of us down, especially the people of New Orleans. And, by the way, they let the president down.

I've been fired a few times. It's not the end of the world. So George, fire somebody.

That's My Word.

Watch John Gibson weekdays at 5 p.m. ET on "The Big Story" and send your comments to: myword@foxnews.com