Consultant Roles in Disasters

This morning's NYT had an interesting article about the role of consultants in addressing Hurricane Katrina. The story started like this

It was Thursday, Sept. 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina had ripped across the Gulf Coast. As New Orleans descended into horror, the top aides to Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana were certain the White House was trying to blame their boss, and they were becoming increasingly furious.

"Bush's numbers are low, and they are getting pummeled by the media for their inept response to Katrina and are actively working to make us the scapegoats," Bob Mann, Ms. Blanco's communications director, wrote in an e-mail message that afternoon, outlining plans by Washington Democrats to help turn the blame back onto President Bush.

With so much criticism being directed toward the governor, the time had come, her aides told her, to rework her performance. She had to figure out a way not only to lead the state through the most costly natural disaster in United States history, but also to emerge on top somehow in the nasty public relations war.

Blanco released a ton of information over the weekend which included the exchanges above and others. Interestingly they released this mound of information only to the traditional media.

I had a couple of questions when I read the story. #1 - Why should any public official spend so much time trying to "win a PR war"? Bush's people were doing the same thing. But wouldn't it have been better to just do the job of responding to the disaster? #2 - Why should the Governor of LA think this was a complete disclosure if she only puts this stuff out to the media? Is there some idea about getting them to do the right story? Or is there an assumption that the average citizen does not have the same right to know as the media?

These consultants are always fighting the wrong war (concentrating on image not substance) - but always at our expense. Seems like an extremely bad bargain. But then we knew that.