Bush gets around to sort-of-almost-but-not-quite-dumping Brown at FEMA

■"Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush and FEMA Chief," by Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, 10 September 2005, pulled from web.

Bush hates to fire people, a weakness that seriously undermines his CEO approach (BTW, this is something I like about Steve DeAngelis: very sweet man who cares a lot about his people, but in the gut-check moments on personnel, he's completely unsentimental).

The chain on this one made the firing a necessity: Bush sits in the White House on Thursday of last week and an aide brings in a news report from N.O. about people dying at the Superdome. Bush had been briefed by DHS boss Chertoff that morning and heard nothing on this. Why? Brown at FEMA hadn't told Chertoff about this.

CANYOUBELIEVEIT?

In my mind, a serious CEO fires Brown on the spot that morning. Me, I would have been spitting mad to have been left so obviously in the dark on such a politically-charged issue. I mean, think about it: you're the one guy in the world with the real power to stop things like this if you so choose. Maybe you piss off a world of political opponents in the process and maybe you wreck a bit of your presidency on it, but how do you sleep at night with that sort of failure?

Me, I just wouldn't. Heads would roll and I'd want better pronto. I think most people are like this.

And I think that's Bush's main problem right now: his administration's initial response just don't pass the bullshit test. You hear the explanation, but once you get the facts unvarnished and straight, you just want to blurt out, "Bullshit!"

Of course, Bush doesn't really fire Brown. Instead he's jerked back to DC and a Coastie 3-star with serious credentials is put in charge down there. But frankly, that's like the team owner yanking the coach off the bench at halftime. Brown is done, and not making that a clean break is a real mistake on the part of the White House.

But this is a problem with this administration: it hates to ever admit mistakes, and that unwillingness to say "sorry" actually ends up costing them far more than the original mistake.

And that is not good CEO-ing.