Of Two Minds

To find the moment this fall when the ramifications of this year's killer hurricanes for the future of the federal government became clear, one needs to travel back to the afternoon of Friday, Sept. 9.

By then, the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast had been struggling with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for nearly two weeks, and Americans across the country were trying to make sense out of a federal response that seemed anemic, disorganized and ineffective. At this moment, on CNN's Situation Room, the curmudgeonly Jack Cafferty, who plays the program's designated spokesman for the common man, let loose with one of his patented tirades.

"I think one of the reasons there's been so much criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina is that it has jumped out into the public consciousness as a glaring example of the kind of government inefficiency and failure that we all think on some level exists almost everywhere," Cafferty said. "Whether you go to traffic court, whether you try to appeal your property taxes, whether you try to collect your veterans' benefits, there is this sense that government ain't getting the job done, and all of a sudden comes Katrina and it's like, well, There's the proof of what we've all been suspicious of all along.'"