As the Chinese suffered under Mao, so too do the Americans suffer needlessly exacerbated tragedies due to Bush's disconnect that the realities afflicting his subjects and to the incompetence of his administration due to the rampant appointment of non-qualified individuals who were awarded such positions for their party and/or ideological loyalty.
"...the ideology of the Maoist years, where a favored slogan was "Better Red than Expert," which meant, in practice,
that totally unqualified ideologues were put in charge of projects that really needed technical expertise.link "
The disaster that has been any federal leadership following the Katrina disaster is due largely, in my opinion to three things. First, Bush and his people's amazing disconnect and arrogance and the inability for them to alter their agendas and "modus operandi" to address rapidly changing situations. Secondly, on the level of incompetence at the agency level there has been a deterioration of technical expertise due to the purging of those politically and ideologically un-loyal. The reason why their loyalty to Bush is important leads to a third reason for the miserable federal response. These political appointees must drink the kool-aid that tells them that massive budget cuts to their own agencies are a good thing and will not affect their ability to operate.