As Judge John Roberts was being entertained Monday during the ice cream social that passes for a Supreme Court confirmation hearing these days, FEMA director Mike Brown resigned. The timing couldn’t have been more impeccable or better calculated as far serving the Bush administration’s own political purposes, for two birds were then slain with a very light stone. Since Brown was condemned by many Americans for his slow response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, his resignation takes some heat off of the White House (bird one, dead). That’s not to say that Brown is any kind of sacrificial lamb—his forced resignation was due and everyone short of himself knew it. This is, after all, the man to have claimed to the uncharacteristically confrontational media that he did not know about the flooding of New Orleans until he read it in a newspaper (does no one at FEMA own a television set?). But with strategic deftness certainly not shown during the relief effort, Brown delivered his statement of resignation during day one of Judge Roberts’ hearings. This caused the television news stations that were covering the hearings to cut away or at least use a split-screen to focus on Brown. It was not done by the White House to distract the public from anything contentious said by Judge Roberts or the senators, for certainly nothing was. But in its timing a dramatic mea culpa (bird two) was offered to the electorate and also to the Democrats, who had the actual nerve to demand immediate accountability for the fiasco that ensued in New Orleans during the week that followed the hurricane. In the half-hearted valentine that the White House served Democrats by sending Brown packing contains the message that the administration is not incapable of seeing the error of its ways, and that if we hand over Brown, then you should take it easy on Roberts in the days to come. But don’t feel too self-satisfied, hints the majority. We have the “yea” votes, anyhow.

            It is a shame that, for once, the Democrats are the ones lusting for blood and a head on a deserved pike, yet so far unable to indict the Compassionate Conservatism cause that fails to live up to its name. The conservative mantra during the aftermath was: “The people of New Orleans were ordered to evacuate. The ones who stayed are to blame,” and most sinister to the point of being comedic: “Don’t rely on big government to help you in a time of crisis.”  All well and good if you possessed the means to leave the city in the first place; that is, if you weren’t  third generation  poverty born into a ramshackle house that contained your scant worldly possessions. And most of us wouldn’t rely on big government during a flood anyhow, that is, if we owned our own private fleet of rescue helicopters and amphibious personnel carriers. Ironically, it’s all very Darwinian in nature: only the strong survive, or deserve to.

That is not to say that many Republicans weren’t also angered, but their promise of forming a bipartisan committee to look into the failings of FEMA and the feds offers the kind of assurance that a debt collector hears when he is told “The check is in the mail”. Yet only the brilliant strategizing of the Republican Party can turn a national embarrassment like Brown into political capital by sending him packing as Roberts’ hearing is taking place. It is a needed appeal to the electorate, and the first inkling, after five years in office, that someone might actually be let go in this administration if something goes terribly wrong. I should hope that the Democrats do not see it as justice served or an open invitation to Republican compromise, since the Republicans, with Judge Roberts’ apparent ascension to Chief Justice, firmly control the reigns of government. Instead, they should see it for what it truly is—a tin emblem, gilded and in fine packaging but of little real value.