Political incompetence can hide in the shadows of a legislative body for years on end. But no politician in an executive position can hide incompetence for long. In the case of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, his performance in the national spotlight was as quick and abysmally bad as some of the first round rejects on "American Idol."

While the fiscal costs of the Katrina calamity is enormous and climbing, thankfully the human cost is extraordinarily small compared to initial claims irresponsibly proffered by Mayor "Ragin" Nagin, which only added to widespread panic. On Wednesday, August 31, 2005 Nagin suggested that the death toll would be "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands," according to the Associated Press. Ragin' Nagin later went on to speculate that the final death toll could be upwards of 10,000.

As sad as it is, the confirmed death toll in Louisiana is 197 people (as of September 11, 2005) far less than the 10,000 the Mayor had predicted. On what basis he made his initial claim is uncertain, although his assertion was clearly unfounded.

Disturbingly, more New Orleans police officers walked off their job -- 550 officers are missing from the city's 1,750-member force - than citizens who are known to have perished because of the Hurricane Katrina. Despite this, Mayor Nagin hatched a scheme to send New Orleans cops on an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas to give local cops some R&R even while the crisis unfolded and despite the fact that the force is already undermanned.
MSNBC reported that as recent as August 2005 New Orleans had only 3 officers per 1,000 residents -- less than half the rate of the DC police force -- even though the city's homicide rate is ten times the national average: "Adjusted for the city's size, those numbers dwarf murder rates in Washington, Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City."
Yet, Mayor Nagin's rationale for the outbreak of looting was that "we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people that were stuck in attics, man, old ladies." But it is unclear to what extent any such searches took place before the arrival of the National Guard and federal troops.
Nagin, who along with Governor Blanco had primary responsibility for public safety before and after the hurricane made landfall, appears to have ignored the guidelines of the Southeast Louisiana Hurricane Evacuation and Sheltering Plan revised in January, 2000 and other published emergency plans that clearly pointed out the need for transportation for thousands of New Orleans' residents in the event of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.

The reports reads:

"The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles.
School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating."

Illinois Senator Barak Obama, while intending to castigate federal efforts during an appearance on ABC's "This Week", stumbled across the primary culprit in what turned out to be a clumsy local government response the hurricane:

"Whoever was in charge of planning was so detached from the realities of inner city life in New Orleans...that they couldn't conceive of the notion that they couldn't load up their SUV's, put $100 worth of gas in there, put some sparkling water and drive off to a hotel and check in with a credit card."

While certainly not intending to do so, the "whoever" identified by Senator Obama is Mayor Nagin. Although the poorer residents of New Orleans couldn't load up an SUV and leave town, as the Senator colorfully opined, the City's own evacuation report called for loading up buses before the hurricane hit. However, Mayor Nagin's comments during a September 2nd CNN interview clearly suggests that Nagin never read his own evacuation report:

"I need reinforcements, I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. We ain't talking about -- you know, one of the briefings we had, they were talking about getting public school bus drivers to come down here and bus people out here.

I'm like, 'You got to be kidding me. This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans.'"

School buses, however, sat idle and were rendered useless by the flood. Those very buses could have carried evacuees to safety before the storm hit, but they were never deployed. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bob Williams of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation underscored this point: "local, state and federal officials held a simulated hurricane drill 13 months ago, in which widespread flooding supposedly trapped 300,000 people inside New Orleans...the problems identified in the simulation apparently were not solved."

It is grossly negligent for a person with authority over first responders to scream hysterically into the nearest microphone, casting aspersions during a moment of crisis. It is his job to read, understand, internalize and calmly act upon pre-determined plans designed with the aid of experts in emergency planning; to know the city and know its people and do what is necessary given the constraints at hand.

The best laid plan is worthless without a competent leader to implement it. In other words, Ragin Nagin fiddled as New Orleans drowned.

John D. Colyandro is the Executive Director of the Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute (TCCRI); Brent Connett is a Policy Analyst at TCCRI.