Brownie Does a Heck of a Job Resigning

Today, FEMA Director Michael Brown defended himself against his critics:

I'm just one of those guys who knows, when you know what's right, just do it, so I pulled the trigger…

So let's take a quick quiz. Was Brown talking about:

1. Prepositioning adequate personal and resources to effectively manage the hurricane and flooding in New Orleans?
2. Responding quickly to the humanitarian crisis at the convention center by hurrying food, water, and buses to the site?
3. Resigning?

If you guessed (c), you are correct, and I stand corrected. On Friday, I suggested that Brownie would wait a month or two before resigning, until the controversy surrounding his tenure had died down and he got the "all clear" signal from Bush & Co. But it looks like he went ahead and pulled that trigger earlier.

And maybe a little too early.

In a written statement released by the agency, Brown said, "As I told the President, it is important that I leave now to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA."

Brown's resignation came amidst Bush's third trip to the region since the disaster erupted. The president side-stepped questions about Brown's resignation. "Maybe you know something I don't know. I've been working," Bush said to reporters on an inspection tour of damage in Gulfport, Miss.

So Brown resigns, says he told the President, and the President says he doesn't know about it? Jeebus, this guy can't even resign without screwing it up.

Note: The quotes above were taken from a Washington Post story that, in the process of writing this post, had been replaced with a later version. A search of the Post website didn't yield the original version.