The moving parts of the Bush administration’s emergency management organization have been tripping over themselves, in congratulatory huzzahs over how they’ve handled the wildfire situation in California. In fact, Geo. Bush himself went out of his way as he did his “flyover” yesterday to downplay any parallel between the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and the current wildfires:

The AP reports President Bush “had a message Thursday for Southern Californians weary and frightened from five days of wildfires. ‘We’re not going to forget you in Washington, D.C.,’ he declared in an eerie echo of what he once told Hurricane Katrina victims.”…

It took Bush almost a week to get to New Orleans after Katrina. It only took five days to get to Southern California. I guess that’s an improvement, and worthy of note.

But what was really stunning was to read an account in the Washington Post today regarding a FEMA press conference on the wildfires. The presser was hastily arranged, and reporters were given 15 minutes notice prior to the briefing - like any of them had rocket sleds to get from their offices to the FEMA offices. Anyway, the presser went on. As Al Kamen of WaPo notes:

…Something didn’t seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA’s greatness.
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Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We’re told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of external affairs, and by “Mike” Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External Affairs John “Pat” Philbin asked a question, and another came, we understand, from someone who sounds like press aide Ali Kirin…

…But the staff did not make up the questions, he said, and Johnson did not know what was going to be asked. “We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day.” Despite the very short notice, “we were expecting the press to come,” he said, but they didn’t. So the staff played reporters for what on TV looked just like the real thing…

When I read this, I asked myself: what’s the difference, anyway? Almost the entire Washington press corps has been “gannonized”, and it’s rare that anyone in the administration gets a hardball question. So, in the interest of media consolidation (and truly knowing the source of the softball questions), why don’t they just be upfront about it in the future?

The staffers could just preface their questions with, “I’m not a real reporter, and don’t play one on TV, but here’s a question that everyone is asking…”

Update: Here’s a link to an AP video report on the faux news conference dustup. It’s actually very good, and gets to the heart of the matter in 90 seconds. Well worth the viewing.