It's Not About Being an Attorney

Syndicated columnist Bob Novak has a seething piece on Real Clear Politics in which he argues that because DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA Director Michael Brown are attorneys, they have incompetently handled Hurricane Katrina. He doesn't offer any reasoning as to why the legal training of Chertoff and Brown is somehow relevant to their performance, but he begins and ends the column with the same conclusion: get the lawyers away from the relief efforts and things will get better.

Novak's premise is absurd. Sure, Secretary Chertoff and Director Brown have failed rather spectacularly, but so have a number of others who aren't attorneys. Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco isn't an attorney (she holds a B.S. in business education from the University of Louisiana), and neither is New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (who I think has done some good things and has at least spoken candidly)--he holds a B.S. in accounting from Tuskegee University and an M.B.A. from Tulane University. And how about President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, the duo from whom the buck ostensibly stops? Neither are attorneys (Bush holds a B.A. from Yale and an M.B.A. from Harvard, while Cheney holds bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Wyoming). The same can be said of top White House strategist Karl Rove, who attended the University of Utah.

In other words, almost all of the decision-makers are not attorneys, and yet Novak's premise is that the attorneys are at fault. Moreover, even if Chertoff and Brown deserve most of the blame, how is their legal training relevant? Novak doesn't say. And why doesn't he say? Because it's not relevant. Brown's failures probably have most to do with his missing qualifications: he's a GOP operative who's loyalty to Bush and friendship with former FEMA Director Joe Albaugh got him the job. I'm not sure why Chertoff has failed, but I don't think his Harvard Law degree has anything to do with it (at least, I hope not).

Lastly, if attorneys are so inept at managing relief efforts, then how come former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani--a graduate of NYU Law School and a former US Attorney--did so well in responding to the September 11th terrorist attacks?

I admit: this post is "law" and not "sports," but sometimes you read such an incongruous anti-lawyer piece that you feel compelled to respond.

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