Last weekend, the city of New Orleans was hammered by what will almost certainly be remembered as the worst natural disaster in American history. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin currently predicts a final death toll above 10 thousand, which certainly places Katrina's aftermath within the same order of magnitude as the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the 1900 Galveston Flood, or the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
Predictably, the national media's initial focus on damage assessment and humanitarian relief has rapidly shifted to the more divisive (and journalistically lucrative) question of accountability. Who, asks the Fourth Estate, is to blame for this disaster's appalling magnitude?
Good question, I guess, though one might wish that we could focus our energies a little more closely on the damage control and relief efforts, rather than on leveraging disaster for short-term political advantage. But that's purely a moral issue: those currently seeking political advantage probably wouldn't have much of practical value to offer in any case.
Since the dual questions of responsibility and accountability are already on the table, though, let's see what we can do with them.
The Distinction
Responsibility and accountability are terms often confused in the public mind. For the record, then, here's what the American Heritage Dictionary has to say about the distinction between synonyms of the word responsible:
Synonyms: responsible..., accountable
These adjectives share the meaning obliged to answer, as for one's actions, to an authority that may impose a penalty for failure. Responsible often implies the satisfactory performance of duties or the trustworthy care for or disposition of possessions: “I am responsible for the ship's safety” (Robert Louis Stevenson). Accountable especially emphasizes giving an account of one's discharge of a responsibility: “The liberal philosophy holds that enduring governments must be accountable to someone beside themselves” (Walter Lippmann).
In life, we are responsible for many things, from feeding the cat and doing the dishes to ensuring that our children learn how to read and write. Generally speaking, however, we are accountable for very few of those responsibilities. Why? Because, more often than not, there exists no convenient higher authority to receive our reports concerning the discharge of our various responsibilities. Surely, many people seek G-d as the ultimate nexus of accountability in the world... but when was the last time you reminded G-d that you did all the dishes before bedtime?
Accountability is for special responsibilities.
Accountability is also somewhat tricky. Consider the executive who places special trust and confidence in an assistant, and routinely assigns her sensitive work. If the assistant screws up and costs the company a bundle, it is the executive—not his assistant—who must answer to the Board. Sure, the assistant may answer to her boss in turn... if he's still around by the time the Board gets through with him. As we used to point out in the Navy, responsibility can be delegated, but accountability is yours to keep whether you like it or not.
Of course, once in a while an important client just walks in front of a bus. Accountability may assume the power to influence events... but it doesn't confer it.
Accountability In New Orleans
By the nature of our system, political accountability is rather clearly laid out. The Mayor of New Orleans is accountable to the Governor of Louisiana for the state of his city—pun intended—and its environs. The Governor is accountable to the State Legislature and, ultimately, to the citizens of Louisiana. He is also, to some degree, accountable to the Federal government, culminating with the President. This many-branched tree of accountability—more of a bush, really—is defined by state and federal constitutions, refined by legislation at both levels, and elucidated by the courts. With respect to an event like Hurricane Katrina, which is fairly localized in time and space, the chain of accountability is fixed.
From this perspective, it is necessary and reasonable to pester accountable parties with hard questions, such as Why wasn't New Orleans better prepared for disaster than it was? and Why weren't the levees strong enough? Timing may be an issue, as the need for action may trump the desire for instant accountability, but it is vital that those accounts ultimately be given by the parties who are accountable.
Note that calling an accountable person to account in no way inherently implies any kind of negligence or wrongdoing on his part. It's just a necessary administrative process. After all, if the accountable person can't give a proper accounting of events, then who can?
This principle applies at all levels. In the chain of command stretching between the President of the United States and the President of Orleans Parish—not to mention numerous side branches stretching to FEMA, the National Guard, the Army Corps of Engineers, and other bodies—nearly every person holds some degree of accountability regarding the disaster we face in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Together, by degrees, they will tell their collective story. In the telling of this story, we will learn to what degree those accountable people actually had the power to effect significant change.
With luck, we will also learn some hard lessons about how to prevent such tragedies in the future. Even the rabid political partisan must agree that prevention of future disasters must take priority over present-day witch hunts. The more reasonable citizen will appreciate modest success in the face of overwhelming odds, and will seek to capitalize on those successes when planning against future events.
Whether those to whom accountable people are accountable elect to impose judgment or sanction should depend on the accountable person's actual power to influence events, rather than on his scope of accountability alone. The alternative is simply scapegoating, which punishes the man in the arena while rewarding politically nimble bench-sitters with lenience at best and, for the truly slippery ones, glory.
Responsibility On The Ground
We have alreeady established that accountability is necessarily thinner on the ground than responsibility, since accountability absolutely requires a body of authority to be accountable to. For example, no sane person would deny a parent's ultimate responsibility for the welfare of her child, yet—except in the most extreme cases of negligence or abuse—most parents are accountable to exactly nobody over how they treat their kids.
In fact, it may be fair to assert that the quality of a person's character may be directly assessed by how well he discharges those responsibilities in his life for which he is accountable to no one.
Between late 2001 and early 2005, national media sources produced at least nine in-depth reports evaluating the risk and potential effects of a major hurricane passing near the city of New Orleans. The topic is a perennial favorite in local drinking establishments. Prior to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina, it is inconceivable that there existed a single New Orleans resident over the age of three—in or out of city politics—who could not provide on command a reasonably detailed accounting of the risks faced by the city. The city fathers have been aware of the danger for decades.
Given the level of awareness among the citizens of New Orleans, it is appropriate to ask: Where were they before the hurricane ever formed?
Much is made of Federal dollars that went to Iraq instead of to the Army Corps of Engineers in Orleans Parish. For the moment, let us assume something far beyond the worst case: that the President, along with the rest of the Federal government, conspired to prevent the city of New Orleans from acquiring adequate flood defenses in a deliberate effort to cause the destruction of the city.
So what?
It is almost unquestionably true that, had there been an accurate, two week warning of impending danger, not a single child would have perished in New Orleans... because, once the storm hit, all the children would have been elsewhere. Responsible parents would have seen to it.
A homeowner is responsible for the integrity of his home. A mother is responsible for the welfare of her children. A business owner is responsible for the future of his business. That there are challenges to overcome in each of these positions—even adversaries to defeat!—in no way reduces the obligation of any of these actors to his respective charge. It is the duty of a parent to provide for her children despite any difficulty involved.
Prior to Hurricane Katrina, the Greater New Orleans area boasted over 1.3 million citizens who collectively contributed about $50 billion annualy to the nation's Gross Domestic Product. The region's residents and business owners have long known about the hurricane risk. Surely some citizens were more concerned than others... after all, some people have more to lose than others.
So where were they? Where were the political action committees to force the city to tax its residents to build up the levees, if Federal funds weren't available? Where were the fund drives to solicit levee reinforcement costs from the citizenry, backed up with matching donations and equipment loans by local businesses? After all, both groups had literally everything to lose!
Failing all that, where were the tens of thousands of concerned citizens donating an hour or two of their time, once a week, filling and humping sandbags in order to secure those levees, by any means, whatever the cost?
In short, if the residents of New Orleans cared so little about the danger hanging over their city that they did little or nothing individually to prevent an entirely preventible disaster, then why should the citizens of New York, Chicago, or Boise—Federal taxpayers all—have expended any more treasure to fix the problem than did the people whose homes and families were actually at risk?
If this sounds like a harsh judgment, so be it. Perhaps the hunt for scapegoats in the wake of this disaster will actually snare one or two responsible parties. If so, then so much the better. Still, it's impossible not to observe that—balanced against the intolerable weight of an infant corpse in his mother's arms—finding somebody else to blame must be small compensation indeed.