Katrina `a failure of leadership'
The horrifying pictures of mass destruction come from a different kind of gulf war, the one taking place in New Orleans: looting and shooting in sewage-filled streets while dead bodies float by and airports double as morgues. Behind this American nightmare is a failure of leadership, management and, most important, right-wing ideology. An appearance of callous indifference is unbecoming in a leader. President Bush at first barely interrupted his vacation, and then cracked jokes about partying in New Orleans. But the real leadership failure started well before Katrina: a lack of foresight to plan for the future, not to mention reading and acting on environmental reports or ensuring help for disadvantaged fellow citizens. Management failures abounded before, during and after the storm. ''New Orleans is paying a deadly price for decades of mismanagement of the Mississippi River,'' the National Audubon Society president wrote. Despite well-known weaknesses in flood protection, Congress slashed $70 million from the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for the New Orleans district. When Katrina struck, chaos ensued. FEMA was accused of an ineffective and even counter-productive response. FEMA's head was pilloried as an inexperienced manager sacked from his job running horse shows, getting the FEMA post through cronyism. The grand prize for failure goes to the right-wing political ideology that has dominated American politics for 25 years.• Contempt for government, making it the enemy in arguing for tax reductions and starving essential services while borrowing heavily for favored projects;
• Trickle-down economic theories tolerating growing inequality and short-term consumption over long-term investment, neglecting both infrastructure and human services;
• Dismissal of science as just another body of opinions ignorable by anyone speaking directly to God;
• Proclamations about America's self-evident superiority, justifying a costly and unpopular war and disdaining international cooperation.
Who feels superior now, when Third World countries are sending aid and lecturing us on disaster response? Who still wants to neglect science and engineering? After torrents revealed so many vulnerable minority Americans, are there any proponents of trickle-down prosperity? Ironically, the Census Bureau report on poverty was issued just as Katrina struck, disproportionately victimizing the poor. About 28 percent of New Orleans residents lived in poverty, 84 percent of them black. Nationally, we have endured the longest stretch of income stagnation on record. Income inequality was near an all-time high in 2004, with 50.1 percent of income going to top 20 percent of households and 37 million Americans living under the poverty line. No wonder an estimated 100,000 people had no way out of New Orleans. Before Katrina, Republicans wanted more tax cuts for the wealthy, opposed raising the minimum wage and sought cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and federal student loans. After Katrina, will they dare?
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, specializing in strategy, innovation and leadership for change. She advises major corporations and governments worldwide and is the author and co-author of 16 books. In 2001 she received the Academy of Management's Distinguished Career Award, its highest award for scholarly contributions, for her impact on management thought. In 2002, she received the World Teleport Association's Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year Award.
No comments:
Post a Comment