The Party of Performance

David Ignatius writes a thought-provoking piece in the Washington Post regarding the response to Katrina by both parties, and the need for a "party of performance". He may be onto something here.

Neither party has particularly distinguished themselves in the aftermath of Katrina. The GOP was a little slow getting FEMA and other government agencies off the dime, and the Dems have been laughable. According to this article, Harry Reid wants to investigate whether Bush's vacation contributed to the destruction in New Orleans. Who could take anyone seriously that was so horribly shallow in their thinking?

Back in 1994 Newt Gingrich stood the political world on its head with the "Contract With America" and swept the Dems out of power in both the House and Senate. Newt is considering a run for president in '08, and Ignatius thinks he may have the right approach to dealing with Katrina and the resulting rebuilding effort:

Now listen to what Gingrich has to say about "changing the playbook" after Katrina. His comments are drawn from two memos he has circulated to Republican leaders since the storm hit and from a conversation we had this week exploring some of his ideas.

Gingrich argues that the values debate that has divided America so sharply during the past decade is over. There's a broad consensus about most issues, and anyway people realize that the country's big problems aren't about morality but performance. "We're not in a values fight now but over whether the system is working," Gingrich told me. "The issue is delivery." And that's true at every level -- city, state and federal.

Gingrich's critique of the federal response is as devastating as that of any Democrat. "For the last week the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve," he wrote fellow Republicans this week. "The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable," and for that reason, "it is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed." He observes in another memo, "While the destruction was unprecedented, it was entirely predictable."

What's needed is a creative government response as big as the disaster itself. Gingrich urges in one of his memos that Bush appoint a super-manager who can oversee the rebuilding and suggests Rudy Giuliani for the job. "The former mayor has enough management toughness to force the federal agencies to actually change their behavior," he writes.

The former speaker has some classic Gingrich zingers for how to rev up the rebuilding effort. He wants to turn the Gulf Coast into a "Zone of Recovery, Reconstruction and Prosperity," by offering a 25 percent tax credit for all job-creating investment in the region over the next three years. And he wants to create a cadre of "entrepreneurial public managers" who can replace the leaden public bureaucracy and get things done on Internet time, with the reliability of FedEx or UPS.

This is the moment for the Party of Performance to take center stage. The breakdown in public life was obvious before Katrina. We have a government that can't control its borders, can't find a viable strategy for its war in Iraq, can't organize the key agencies to address the terrorism problems it has been trumpeting. The yearning in the country for something different has been palpable this year.

America faces an "extreme disaster," says Gingrich, one that will have more lasting and complex effects than any domestic event since World War II. The politicians who rise to that challenge will surge in the 2006 and 2008 elections. The ones who remain stuck in their ruts will suffer. Who's ready to sign up for the Party of Performance?

Perhaps Newt's approach to this hurricane will be the next "Contract With America" that causes a fundamental shift in how things are done in this country.