A more visceral indictment came from closer to the calamity. Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish near New Orleans, said the bureaucracy ''has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area."
''Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot," Broussard told CBS. ''Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
''There is nothing more powerful than the urge to blame," said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis management consultant who helps corporate leaders and other prominent figures try to repair tattered images. ''It happens every time. It is a deeply embedded archetype in the human mind."
Brown, a lawyer, in some ways is an easy target.
The former head of the International Arabian Horse Association, Brown had no background in disaster relief when Joe Allbaugh a longtime friend who was FEMA director at the time, hired him to serve as the agency's general counsel in 2001.
But the dim view of Brown's qualifications by senators seems to have emerged only in hindsight. Members of both parties seemed little troubled by his background at Senate hearings in 2002 that led to his confirmation as deputy FEMA chief.
As FEMA chief, Brown, 50, has pressed for greater attention to planning for natural disasters, including strategies for a major hurricane in New Orleans, and he has had to contend with cuts to FEMA's operating budget while more attention was paid to fighting terrorism.
But as the enormity of the Gulf Coast damage gradually came into clearer focus, Brown did not help his case with a number of comments seen as insensitive or ill advised. For example, he acknowledged last week that he didn't know there were about 20,000 evacuees enduring horrible conditions at the New Orleans convention center until a day after their difficulties had been widely reported in the news.
ABC's Ted Koppel was incredulous as he asked Brown: ''Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio?"
For now, at least, President Bush is standing by Brown.
''Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," Bush told him last week.
And Brown, for his part, is trying to shrug off the criticism.
''People want to lash out at me, lash out at FEMA," he said to reporters.
''I think that's fine. Just lash out, because my job is to continue to save lives."
