Michael Loewinger

After the storm, as journalists started digging into FEMA's dysfunction, they discovered a political backwater filled with unqualified Bush appointees.

Congressional records show that while at most federal agencies there is only one political appointee for every 3,000 government agencies, at FEMA there's one for every 300.

So the election for the president was only like three months later.

Bill Clinton, the first Democrat to take the White House in 12 years, had seen how FEMA's reputation had dragged his predecessors.

Unlike them, he understood that natural disasters are media spectacles, predictable, high-stakes dramas that generate a steady stream of coverage.

So when Clinton came into office, he did something radical.

He appointed somebody actually qualified to run FEMA.

Somebody who would fundamentally transform the agency from a liability to a government success story.

A man named James Lee Witt, who had served as the Arkansas Director of Emergency Management when Clinton was governor.

As governor of Arkansas, when I went to work for him there, he said, if it affects people's lives and it's going to be in the media, then I want to know about it.

This is Witt speaking with C-SPAN in 1996.

Absolutely.

I never will forget it.

It was in 1974, and I was coaching a Little League baseball team in Dardanelle, Arkansas.

When they first met, Clinton was a law professor and congressional candidate, and Witt ran a local construction company.

You didn't go to college.

No.

Do you ever have any second thoughts about that?

Sure.

I guess anyone that has never been to college wished they had gone.